Richard Wirthlin, RIP
Over dinner at the Reagan Library yesterday evening--I'll post about the event in due course--Mrs. Reagan mentioned that she had received some sad news. One of Dick Wirthlin's children, she said, had called her earlier in the day. After years of declining health, Dick, 80, had passed away. Mrs.
Reagan takes her entertaining duties seriously, and she had four tables of dinner guests to oversee, but for a long moment, she looked shaken.
Dick Wirthlin was Ronald Reagan's pollster--and, as anyone who saw them together would confirm, his friend. (In the photo, Dick is the third from left.) Dick would visit the White House from time to time to tell the President what polls showed about his stands on various issues. Only from time to time? Yes. During the Reagan years, the pollster wasn't a member of the staff. He didn't shape policy. He merely turned up every so often to report. As Dick explained to us speechwriters, Ronald Reagan didn't use polling data to decide what policies to pursue. He used it to help figure out how best to make his case to the American people. Dick proved warm, loyal, and--in Washington, this is a trait to cherish--invariably light-hearted. And he loved Ronald Reagan.
I was only aware of a couple of instances in which Dick ever thought the President was making a mistake. Here's one, which I looked up this morning in my book, How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life:
The scene takes place in the Oval Office as Richard Wirthlin, the President's pollster, meets the President in the spring of 1985. Reagan wants to pursue legislation that would simplify the tax code, remove millions of working poor from the tax roles, and cut personal income tax rates.., lowering the top tax rate to 28 percent. Wirthlin wants to talk him out of it.
"There was a reason I felt discouraged," Wirthlin now says. "We'd been polling, and when we asked the open-ended question, 'What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the phrase, "tax reform"?' the majority of Americans said, 'Tax increases.' They opposed tax reform because they believed it would mean a tax increase. I never thought I'd have to say this about a project Ronald Reagan wanted to take on, but it looked like we were going to lose."
Wirthlin tells the President the polling numbers are against him....Then he pushes Reagan to drop or modify his support for the legislation. Reagan pushes right back, refusing. "He certainly responded to my report soberly," Wirthlin says. "But it didn't in any way deter him."
Later that spring, Reagan began criss-crossing the country to campaign for tax reform. "When they heard about it from Reagan himself," Wirthlin says, "people decidd they could trust tax reform. He was able to tap into their values. That man was amazing." In late 1986, Reagan signed the Tax Reform Act into law.
Dick will be mourned by a large family--he was the father of eight--and, I feel certain, by everyone who ever worked with him.
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May '10
Re: Richard Wirthlin, RIP
A generation is leaving us. Very sad. Hope they got all their stories down on paper, for history's sake.
Feb '11
Re: Richard Wirthlin, RIP
Great post as always.
"As Dick explained to us speechwriters, Ronald Reagan didn't use polling data to decide what policies to pursue. He used it to help figure out how best to make his case to the American people."
Exactly how polling data should be used.
Jun '10
Re: Richard Wirthlin, RIP
As one of the few Utahns (it's not Utahans) on Ricochet, I must make it clear that Wirthlin was a good Utah boy and (big surprise with eight kids) a good Mormon boy as well. And a really classy guy.