This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, March 16, 2010.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Reagan presidency did not shrink government,

but it did limit its growth, at least somewhat.

More ominously, the Reagan presidency may have also

taught politicians that big deficits do not represent instant political

suicide, a belief that is posing some risks for the United States today.

John Samples, author of the new Cato book,

The Struggle to Limit Government, comments.

What was the division presented by the challenge

that Reagan offered to Gerald Ford in 1976.

What was the strongest division that Reagan presented?

Well, I think it was in many ways an ideological division that had to do with reputation

rather than facts.

Ford was willing to veto spending bills.

He was willing to draw the line.

He was a fairly conservative individual.

But he represented in that context the liberal wing of the Republican Party.

He had been chosen by Richard Nixon to be his vice president.

So he was a he represented continuity with Nixon and all the Nixon represented wage and price controls for example

even though he himself perhaps didn't do any of that or defended. Reagan represented an alternative that in a sense the same

alternative goldwater could be understood to be the same alternative that

...