Martin Anderson (August 5, 1936 – January 3, 2015) was an American academic, economist, author, policy analyst, and adviser to U.S. politicians and presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. In the Nixon administration, Anderson was credited with helping to end the military draft and creating the all-volunteer armed forces. Under Reagan, Anderson helped draft the administration's original economic program that became known as “Reaganomics.” A political conservative and a strong proponent of free-market capitalism, he was influenced by libertarianism and opposed government regulations that limited individual freedom.
Anderson wrote and edited numerous books on topics concerning urban renewal, military manpower, welfare reform, higher education, and his experiences advising Reagan and Nixon. Later he coedited four books on Reagan's writings and coauthored two books on Reagan's efforts to negotiate nuclear disarmament with the Soviet Union.
Early life and education Martin Anderson was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on August 5, 1936, the only child of Ralph and Evelyn Anderson, a dairy farmer and a nurse, respectively. In school he was a top student and student body president. In 1953, he was awarded a four-year scholarship to Dartmouth College to study engineering. He graduated in 1957 summa cum laude and remained at Dartmouth to pursue a double master's degree in business and engineering through the Thayer School of Engineering and the Tuck School of Business.
In 1958, Anderson met his future wife, Annelise Graebner; the two married in 1965. They shared an interest in conservative politics and had campaigned together for Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election. They later attended courses together at the Nathaniel Branden Institute and became friends with novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand, and through Rand met economist Alan Greenspan, who through Rand and Alan Greenspan's recommendation had begun his career in government.
Career Academia In 1959, Anderson was named assistant to the dean of the Thayer School of Engineering, and he became acting dean that summer. In the fall of 1959, the Ford Foundation awarded him a fellowship to study economics and finance at the Joint Center for Urban Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At MIT, he became interested in urban renewal, which became the topic of his doctorate. He spent one summer working for the Ford Motor Company as a financial analyst. In 1962, he earned the first Ph.D. in industrial management ever granted by a college or university from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Upon graduating, he embarked upon a career in academia and writing.
On July 1, 1962, Anderson began working as an assistant professor of finance at Columbia Business School. The same year, his dissertation, The Federal Bulldozer: A Critical Analysis of Urban Renewal, 1949–1962, was published by MIT Press. The dissertation's central thesis is that urban renewal was a failure because it didn't eliminate slums or create affordable housing; rather, it replaced slums with more costly housing that forced the poor to move elsewhere. The book was controversially received, including criticism among his fellow professors at Columbia University. Additionally, the book was bashed by Mr. Wilson, the Director of the Joint Center, an organization which sponsored the work, because he claimed that Anderson's work met only the minimum standards of scholarship by which the center conducts its studies. As the book was published with the support of the Joint Center for Urban Studies of M.I.T and Harvard, it was thought it would be an objective study. Rather, some saw the volume as a strongly partisan account and an unbalanced tirade against the federal program as a whole. Amongst a topic with charged opinions, when someone suggests the modification or elimination of a government initiative, as Anderson did, it is often met with a strong responses, which quickly became the case. Anderson's strong claims supported by unqualified and fragile evidence generated a hostile reaction among academics to The Federal Bulldozer.
However, it established Anderson as an expert on urban renewal. It also brought Anderson to the attention of Richard Nixon. In 1965, he was promoted to associate professor; at age 28, he was one of the youngest teachers to receive tenure in Columbia's history. He was associate professor from 1965 to 1968. An updated paperback edition of The Federal Bulldozer was published by McGraw-Hill in 1967.
Advising Richard Nixon Anderson served as an adviser to the 1968 Nixon presidential campaign, Nixon's White House transition, and the Nixon administration.
1968 Nixon presidential campaign In 1967, members of Nixon's staff, Len Garment, Pat Buchanan, and Ray Price, invited Anderson to join Nixon's presidential campaign planning group as a policy adviser. In this role, he wrote a policy paper on ending the draft and moving to an all-volunteer force, “An Analysis of the Factors Involved in Moving to an All-Volunteer Armed Force.” Nixon echoed the sentiments expressed in Anderson's paper in an interview with New York Times reporter Robert B. Semple Jr. in December 1967. Along with Walter Oi and Milton Friedman, Anderson is credited with helping to end military conscription in the United States.
In 1968, Anderson joined the Nixon presidential campaign, focusing on domestic and economic policy. As Nixon's chief urban affairs adviser, Anderson was tasked with developing policy to address the problems associated with America's low-income neighborhoods. He advocated for self-help with a call for increased African American ownership, a component of the movement now known as Black capitalism. A report written by Anderson on the subject of basic income, which quoted heavily from Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation on the Speenhamland system, was credited by Rutger Bregman and Corey Robin with Nixon moving away from the idea of basic income, and by Bregman as, from there, ultimately providing arguments for various welfare reforms by Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
Anderson's wife, Annelise Graebner Anderson, also worked on the campaign, traveling with vice presidential candidate Spiro Agnew. During this time, Anderson was introduced to economists Milton Friedman and Arthur F. Burns, who were to become his lifelong mentors.
Nixon White House transition Martin Anderson was appointed special assistant to the president and worked closely with Arthur F. Burns, who was appointed counsellor for domestic policy. Together they wrote a policy notebook that was used to write letters of instruction for incoming cabinet secretaries. In Anderson's 1990 book Revolution, he lamented that the Nixon transition was not able to find middle- and lower-level staff loyal to the new administration's policy goals.
Nixon administration During the first year of the Nixon administration, Anderson focused on welfare policy. In February 1970, Burns left the White House to become Federal Reserve chair. Upon his departure, Anderson's title changed to special consultant to the president for systems analysis, a title never used before, reporting to John Ehrlichman. In September 1970, Bryce Harlow recruited Anderson, William Safire, and Pat Buchanan to travel with Vice President Agnew and support the reelection campaigns of GOP senators.
In 1968, Richard Nixon had campaigned with a promise to end the draft. Soon after taking office, he formed the President's Commission on an All-Volunteer Force, chaired by former defense secretary Thomas S. Gates Jr. On February 21, 1970, the Gates Commission presented its findings to President Nixon. Its report stated that members unanimously agreed that the country should replace conscription with an all-volunteer military force. In response, Nixon appointed a group of White House staff, headed by Anderson, to review the commission's findings and report on the cost and feasibility of an all-volunteer force. In March 1971, Anderson left the White House to return to academia as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. The national draft officially ended on January 27, 1973.
Advising Ronald Reagan Anderson was the only full-time economic policy adviser on both the 1976 and 1980 Reagan presidential campaigns. After Reagan's successful later bid, Anderson served as an adviser during the White House transition, and during the Reagan administration he served as assistant to the president for policy development and worked on the Military Manpower Task Force. After leaving the White House and returning to academia in March 1982, he continued to advise the Reagan administration, serving on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the President's Economic Policy Advisory Board, and the President's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament.
1976 Reagan presidential campaign In 1975, John Sears and Lyn Nofziger invited Anderson to join the Reagan presidential campaign as an adviser on foreign, defense, and economic policy. Anderson accompanied Reagan throughout the campaign and was present at many key junctures, including Reagan's defeat in the North Carolina primary and his speech at the 1976 Republican National Convention. It was at this time that Anderson became acquainted with Michael Deaver and Edwin Meese III.
Anderson organized meetings between Reagan and the nation's top economists. The meetings led to the formation of six economic policy task forces comprising 74 economists. Between the 1976 and 1980 campaigns, Anderson continued to seek out policy experts and introduce them to Reagan. By the 1980 campaign, there were 329 advisers organized into 23 task forces.
During this time, Anderson was a member of the Committee on the Present Danger, which played an important role in developing defense policy. He continued on the committee until 1991.
1980 Reagan presidential campaign In March 1979, Anderson took an indefinite leave of absence from the Hoover Institution and moved to Los Angeles to join the Reagan campaign. Among his responsibilities were the development and coordination of policy positions. In August 1979, Anderson drafted three influential memoranda on economic policy, energy policy, and foreign and defense policies.
Anderson's Policy Memo No. 1 on economics made the case that inflation was the nation's most pressing domestic concern due to its social and political cost. It further argued that the primary cause for inflation was the deficit and that the best way to eliminate the deficit was to "reduce the rate of growth of federal expenditures and to simultaneously stimulate the economy so as to increase revenues in such a way that the private share grows proportionately more than the government share.”
Anderson's Policy Memo No. 3 on foreign policy, proposed a new, updated missile defense system that foreshadowed Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative.
Reagan White House transition After Reagan's 1980 election to president, Anderson, reporting to Edwin Meese, participated in a broad range of decision-making activities. He studied the transitions of the Ford and Carter administrations and developed a methodical briefing procedure for new cabinet officers that ensured they would “not betray the policies the campaign was fought on.” He also produced and gave to each cabinet secretary a notebook with policy positions relevant to their area.
Reagan administration