Gorging the Beast

Gorging the Beast A dedicated libertarian, William Niskanen was also a dedicated pot-stirrer. For him the two vocations—pressing the case for small government and, at least intellectually, making trouble—were inseparable. He was best known as an original member of Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, one of a principled band of Reaganites who followed their man into the White House and then drifted away as Reagan succumbed to political compromise and ideological deviationism. For the rest of his professional life (he died last year) he worked as chairman of the Cato Institute, the country’s sanest libertarian institution.