This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, February 4th, 2011.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Sunday marks the 100th birthday of the 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan.

William Niskanen served as a member and acting chairman of Reagan's

Council of Economic Advisors.

He is currently Chairman Emeritus and Distinguished Senior Economist

at the Cato Institute.

We spoke about Ronald Reagan earlier this week.

What did you know of Ronald Reagan, the man?

Well I had worked for him when he was a governor of California. I was a professor at Berkeley at the time and served on two of his task forces.

So I had some sense of what he wanted to do as governor. Now over time I got to know him as a man and I have a

summary of my perspective on him in the last year of his administration as is in my book on Regen has the most important

most transparent person in American public life.

He conveys much the same impression to a television audience before large groups to his cabinet and aides and to the socialist president of France.

He is at peace with himself, comfortable with his convictions, intuitive rather than analytical, youthful in spirit,

infectiously optimistic, and gracious in his personal relations.

The contrast with Richard Nixon could not be more dramatic.

I had worked for Nixon also.

As president, what were your expectations when he became president?

Well, I expected him to have ambitious goals.

I did not realize how strongly committed he was on the foreign policy and defense area.

But that, I think, was his most substantial accomplishment of ending the Cold War.

...