John and I started writing together about political issues under a joint byline for fun on the side of our law practice in late 1992 and early 1993. We were provoked by the wretched revisionist history of the Reagan era by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters James Barlett and Donald Steele. Barlett and Steele had written what must be the most successful syndicated newspaper series of all time — America: What Went Wrong?. Originally published in the Philadelphia Inquirer in October 1991, it was syndicated and published in book form the following year. The Clinton campaign adopted it as a campaign manifesto.
Retailing a series of anecdotes, Barlett and Steele portrayed the Reagan years as an economic catastrophe akin to the Great Depression. We had just lived throug the Reagan years with our eyes wide open. Can you really rewrite contemporary history in such an upside down fashion?
We read the seemingly endless series in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, where it appeared every day on page one for the duration. John and I talked about drawing on the relevant data — it went unmentioned in the series — to challenge Barlett and Steele. John called the late Pioneer Press editorial page editor Ron Clark to ask for equal space. Clark declined to give us equal space, but offered to publish a column challenging the series. We spent some time doing research and submitted the column in short order. Clark published it January 1993.
We kept after Barlett and Steele’s series in columns for the next year. David Horowitz and Peter Collier published one of them in their periodical Heterodoxy. Peter sent us a $100 check drawnn on his personal checking account for the column. I think we spent twice that amount celebrating with our wives over dinner at a nice restaurant.
In late 1994 the Star Tribune published another of our columns on Barlett and Steele. We sent a copy of the column to President Reagan’s office. Although President Reagan had announced his affliction with Alzheimer’s that November, Director of Public Affairs Catherine Busch responded to us by letter on his behalf:
On behalf of President Reagan, thank you for sending hima copy of your recent article which appeared in the Star Tribune. I have taken the liberty of passing it, as well as your kind letter, on to him with your best wishes.
Please know that President Reagan appreciated hearing from you. Like you, he realizes that the pundits and his friend in the media are determined to challenge him at every turn — not only his record, but also his conviction and even his integrity. Thank you for your willingness to set the record straight. Please keep it up!
President Reagan asked me to convey his apprecaition for your thoughtfulness and sends his warm regards.
As events transpired, Barlett and Steele “kept it up” and so did we. In 1994 Barlett and Steele struck again. They published the sequel America: Who Really Pays the Taxes? It too was excerpted for a syndicated newspaper series that we read in the Star Tribune. The funny thing about the long series and the even longer book was that Barlett and Steele never did get around to telling readers who really pays the taxes. Again, they told axe-grinding anecdotes.
One of their anecdotes implicated President Bush. Barlett and Steele picked out a year in which President Bush had paid federal taxes at a lower rate than an Oregon resident named Jacques Cotton.
I mentioned the anecodote to my friend Rudy Boschwitz. Rudy had served two terms that covered the Reagan years and first two years of the Bush administration. He asked if we would like him to get a copy of President Bush’s tax return for the year in question. I think we had it in our hands later the same day.
Reviewing Bush’s tax return, we found that Barlett and Steele had treated Bush’s payment of taxes that year in a grossly deceptive manner. We wrote up our analysis in “George Bush’s tax return,” published by National Review in the magazine’s May 30, 1994 number. Here is the heart of it:
Under the rubric of “The Privileged Person’s Tax Law,” [Barlett and Steele] report that George and Barbara Bush earned $1,324,456 in 1991 and paid a total of $239,063 — 18.1 per cent of their adjusted gross income in taxes. They report that Mr. Cotton, on the other hand, paid a total of $6,618 in state, federal, and Social Security taxes on a gross income of $33,499. Barlett and Steele calculate that these tax payments add up to 19.8 per cent of Mr. Cotton’s income, a slightly higher percentage than the Bushes paid. This calculation is set forth under the heading “The Common Person’s Tax Law.”
Barlett and Steele conclude from this comparison that the American tax system “responds to the appeals of the powerful and influential and ignores the needs of the powerless.” That’s a rather sweeping conclusion to draw from a comparison of two out of millions of tax returns. But is the comparison a fair one to start with?
It didn’t take much investigation to find out that it isn’t. The Bushes’ 1991 tax return was made public when it was filed, and a number of news stories were written about it at the time. That return was newsworthy because the couple’s income that year was three times as high as in any other year of Bush’s Presidency.
Why? Because Barbara Bush earned $889,176 in royalties on Millie’s Book, a humorous look at White House life written from the point of view of the family dog. And why were the Bushes’ taxes relatively low, compared to their income? Because Barbara Bush donated substantially all of the proceeds of Millie’s Book to charity — $818,803, or 62 per cent of the couple’s income that year. They contributed to 49 different charities, everything from Ducks Unlimited to the United Negro College Fund, but the main beneficiary was the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, which received $789,176. After giving away more than 60 percent of their income to charity, George and Barbara Bush had $505,653 left, of which they paid $239,063 — 47 percent — in taxes.
In fact, the Bushes donated more money to charity that year than they could deduct from their taxable income.
We were thrilled when National Review published our article. It was the high point of our pre-Internet collaboration.
We had also faxed the original draft of our article prior to its publication by National Review to President Bush at his office in Houston (Rudy gave us the fax number). This time we received one of the handwritten letters for which President Bush had become famous. Dated May 3, 1994, the letter read:
Dear Scott and John:
Your great piece “Barlett and Steele: What Went Wrong” [our original title for it] was right on the target.
The problem is, of course, they have damaged us by their sloppy if not vengeful writing. I am glad you set the record straight.
I would love to know if those two ever try to rebut that which you have written. Better still, if they apologized, though I would not hold my breath on that one.
Many thanks for that insightful piece. It made Barbara and me feel very good indeed.
Sincerely, and gratefully…
We had actually called and written Barlett and Steele for comment. President Bush was wise not to “hold [his] breath on that one.”
