Mandate for Leadership is a series of books published by The Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think-tank based in Washington, D.C. They offer specific conservative policy recommendations designed to be implemented by the federal government.
The books have traditionally been released to coincide with an incoming U.S. presidential administration. The first edition was released in 1981, following the election of Ronald Reagan to serve as policy guidance for the incoming Reagan administration. The latest edition was published in April 2023.
In 1979, at a trustees' meeting of The Heritage Foundation, Jack Eckerd, former head of the General Services Administration in Ford administration, suggested that the foundation draw up a conservative plan of action for the next incoming presidential administration in January 1981. Robert Krieble proposed that Heritage produce a manual to help policymakers "cut the size of government and manage it more effectively". [1]
The first edition was overseen and edited by Charles Heatherly, a former field director of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. In late January 1980, Heatherly produced a five-page outline titled Mandate for Leadership. Heatherly explained that the purpose of the project was to present concrete proposals to "revitalize our economy, strengthen our national security and halt the centralization of power in the federal government". [1] [2]
Both the Reagan and Carter campaigns were approached by Heritage to discuss the project. However, they only received a reply from the Reagan–Bush campaign, and in July 1980, Reagan aide Edwin Meese was a surprise guest at a dinner held by Heritage for the project's team chairmen and co-chairmen. There, Meese gave the Heritage study his blessing, which was seen as a sign of the Reagan administration's receptiveness to the project. [1]
In January 1981, Mandate for Leadership was released as a 20 volume, 3,000 page publication. Mandate contained more than 2,000 individual suggestions to move the federal government in a conservative direction, focusing on management and administration. The report "presented an explicit plan for reshaping public discourse on civil rights issues [3] ". To that end, it recommended the Justice Department "halt its affirmative action policies to remedy past discrimination against women and other minorities." [4]
Specific suggestions related to spending included raising the defense budget by $20 billion in fiscal year 1981 and increasing it by an average of $35 billion over the next five years; establishing urban “enterprise zones” to encourage businesses to move into the nation's inner cities; reducing personal income tax rates by 10 percent across the board; calling for line-item veto power by the president; and developing a new strategic bomber by using B-1 and advanced bomber technology. [1]
At the first meeting of his cabinet, President Reagan passed out copies of Mandate, and many of the study's authors were recruited into the White House administration. In particular, the Reagan administration hired key Mandate contributors: William Bennett as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (and later as Secretary of Education) and James G. Watt as Secretary of the Interior. [5]
According to Mandate's authors, around 60% of the 2,000 proposals in it were implemented or initiated at the end of Reagan's first year in office. [1] [6] In a report on the first year of the Reagan administration, The Heritage Foundation expressed disappointment with the government's defense and foreign policy, while it lauded the Office of Management and Budget. [7]
Mandate for Leadership appeared on The Washington Post 's paperback bestseller list [1] and the Post called it “an action plan for turning the government toward the right as fast as possible.” [8] The New York Times in 2002 called it “the manifesto of the Reagan revolution.” [9]
In 1984, Heritage released Mandate for Leadership II: Continuing the Conservative Revolution. The study featured 1,300 recommendations from 150 contributors, and continued the original Mandate's aim of reforming the federal government and strengthening U.S. defenses. [10] Heritage published its third manual for an incoming administration in 1988, titled Mandate for Leadership III: Policy Strategies for the 1990s. This edition was edited by Charles Heatherly and Burt Pines. [11]
Prior to the 1996 presidential election Heritage published the fourth Mandate for Leadership edition. Mandate IV was aimed at Congress, and focused on presenting a political strategy for Congress to continue the conservative policies of the outgoing Republican presidential administration. [12] This edition of Mandate was offered as study material at an orientation conference attended by both Democratic and Republican freshman congressmen held by The Heritage Foundation and Empower America. [13] In particular, a chapter on moving an agenda through Congress was recommended by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott to House Speaker Newt Gingrich. [13]
The fifth edition in the Mandate series, Mandate for Leadership 2000, included the edited transcripts of nine nonpartisan public sessions held by Heritage in 2000 called “The Keys to a Successful Presidency”. The forums focused on how past presidents and administrations implemented their policy agendas from their first day in office. Participants included Leon Panetta, former chief of staff to President Clinton; Martin Anderson, who advised President Reagan on domestic policy; Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Carter; and columnist Robert Novak. Historian and former congressional aide, Alvin S. Felzenberg was Mandate for Leadership 2000's project director. [12]
In 2005, Heritage published the sixth edition of Mandate for Leadership. This edition of Mandate was just 156 pages long. According to Heritage, the shorter length reflected that policies and ideas from the early Mandate editions had, by the time of this publication, largely become part of the mainstream debate. [5] [14]
The seventh edition of Mandate for Leadership was published in November 2016, shortly after the 2016 election of Donald Trump as presidency. This edition was longer than prior editions, published in three volumes, in part because much of the progress of the foundation's public policy agenda had been lost during the presidency of Barack Obama. [15]
The ninth edition in the Mandate series, Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise, was published in April 2023, its earliest publication before the presidential election. Edited by Paul Dans and Steven Groves, it has 30 chapters and is over 900 pages in length. [16] This document provides the policy agenda for Project 2025. [17]
Edwin Meese III is an American attorney, law professor, author and member of the Republican Party who served in Ronald Reagan's gubernatorial administration (1967–1974), the Reagan presidential transition team (1980–81), and the Reagan administration (1981–1985). Following the 1984 presidential election, Reagan considered him for the White House Chief of Staff position, but James Baker was chosen instead. Meese was eventually appointed and confirmed as the 75th United States Attorney General (1985–1988), a position he held until resigning in 1988 amidst the Wedtech scandal.
The Reagan Doctrine was stated by United States President Ronald Reagan in his State of the Union address on February 6, 1985: "We must not break faith with those who are risking their lives—on every continent from Afghanistan to Nicaragua—to defy Soviet-supported aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth." It was a strategy implemented by the Reagan Administration to overwhelm the global influence of the Soviet Union in the late Cold War. The doctrine was a centerpiece of United States foreign policy from the early 1980s until the end of the Cold War in 1991.
The Heritage Foundation, sometimes referred to simply as Heritage, is an activist American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1973, it took a leading role in the conservative movement in the 1980s during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, whose policies were taken from Heritage Foundation studies, including its Mandate for Leadership.
Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) is a conservative youth activism organization that was founded in 1960 as a coalition between traditional conservatives and libertarians on American college campuses. It is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and the chapter affiliate of Young America's Foundation. The purposes of YAF are to advocate public policies consistent with the Sharon Statement, which was adopted by young conservatives at a meeting at the home of William F. Buckley in Sharon, Connecticut, on September 11, 1960.
Ronald Reagan's tenure as the 40th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1981, and ended on January 20, 1989. Reagan, a Republican from California, took office following his landslide victory over Democrat incumbent president Jimmy Carter and independent congressman John B. Anderson in the 1980 presidential election. Four years later, in the 1984 presidential election, he defeated former Democratic vice president Walter Mondale, to win re-election in a larger landslide. Due to U.S. Constitutional law, Reagan was limited to two terms and was succeeded by his vice president, George H. W. Bush, who won the 1988 presidential election. Reagan's 1980 landslide election resulted from a dramatic conservative shift to the right in American politics, including a loss of confidence in liberal, New Deal, and Great Society programs and priorities that had dominated the national agenda since the 1930s.
Franklyn Curran "Lyn" Nofziger was an American journalist, conservative Republican political consultant and author. He served as press secretary in Ronald Reagan's administration as Governor of California, and as a White House advisor during the Richard Nixon administration and again during the Reagan presidency.
Bruce Reeves Bartlett is an American historian and author. He served as a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and as a Treasury official under George H. W. Bush. Bartlett also writes for the New York Times Economix blog.
Edwin John Feulner Jr. is a former think tank executive, Congressional aide, and foreign consultant who co-founded The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in 1973 and served as its president from 1977 to 2013 and again from 2017 to 2018.
Russell Errol Train was the second administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), from September 1973 to January 1977 and the founder chairman emeritus of World Wildlife Fund (WWF). As the second head of the EPA under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Train helped place the issue of the environment on the presidential and national agenda in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a key period in the environmental movement. He was a conservative who reached out to the business community and Republicans. He promulgated the idea that as the economy of the nation was growing quickly, public as well as private projects should consider and evaluate the environmental impacts of their actions.
The bibliography of Ronald Reagan includes numerous books and articles about Ronald Reagan. According to J. David Woodard, a political science professor, more than 11,000 books on Reagan have been published.
Thomas Weir Pauken is an American politician and member of the Republican Party.
Martin Anderson 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.
Robert B. Carleson was a key policy advisor on welfare issues to Ronald Reagan in California and the White House; he also founded a conservative alternative to the American Civil Liberties Union called the American Civil Rights Union in 1998.
The Clare Boothe Luce Award was established in 1991 by The Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based public policy research institute, in memory of Clare Boothe Luce, an American ambassador and conservative U.S. congresswoman. The award was intended to recognize major contributors to the conservative movement. There have been eight recipients of the award.
Donald J. Devine is an American political scientist, author, former government official and politician who has studied, written and promoted the philosophy of conservative fusionism as taught to him by the U.S. philosopher Frank Meyer.
Russell "Russ" Thurlow Vought is an American former government official who was the director of the Office of Management and Budget from July 2020 to January 2021. He was previously deputy director of the OMB from 2018 to 2020 and acting director from 2019 to 2020.
Roger Thomas Severino is an American attorney who served as the director of the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) at the United States Department of Health and Human Services from 2017 to 2021. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a contributor on abortion policy to Project 2025.
The presidential transition of Ronald Reagan began when he won the 1980 United States presidential election, becoming the president-elect, and ended when Reagan was inaugurated at noon EST on January 20, 1981.
Charles L. Heatherly is an American bureaucrat who was the acting administrator of the Small Business Administration (SBA) from 1986 to 1987 following the resignation of James C. Sanders.
Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project, is a collection of policy proposals to fundamentally reshape the U.S. federal government in the event of a Republican victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Established in 2022, the project aims to recruit tens of thousands of conservatives to the District of Columbia to replace existing federal civil servants—whom Republicans characterize as part of the "deep state"—and to further the objectives of the next Republican president. It adopts a maximalist version of the unitary executive theory, a widely disputed interpretation of Article II of the Constitution of the United States, which asserts that the president has absolute power over the executive branch upon inauguration.