16 August—Grownups will remember President Gerald Ford’s 1974 campaign to WIN—Whip Inflation Now. Well, it was then, in 1974, but in 1974 then was now. In 2022, of course, 1974 is then while 2022 is now. Got it?

Ford had found himself commanding the Oval Office after the Tricky Dick ceased being POTUS in August 1974. After 1973’s oil crisis, which led to high unemployment and 12 percent inflation, Ford, being a good Republican, liked the idea of the common masses rather than industry addressing the economic problems voluntarily rather than the government imposing price restrictions and other bureaucratic measures that today would be called socialist.

Congress at the time, acting in its own best interest, as usual, had established the National Commission on Inflation, to fool the voters into believing it was actually doing something. Not that it could do anything worthwhile. But Jerry Ford, a former House Minority Leader, seized the opportunity to ask the great unwashed directly to send him, as POTUS, a list of ten inflation-reducing ideas. The White House mail room was kept busy.

In October, Ford declared inflation “public enemy number one” in a speech titled “Whip Inflation Now.” It helped get people’s minds off the unconditional pardon he had granted Nixon (who, as we know, was not a crook and in any case was no longer public enemy number one) a month earlier. Or not.

The proposals for private and public steps to directly affect supply and demand and thus bring inflation under control included voluntary carpooling, turning down thermostats, and planting vegetable gardens. Kind of harked back to World War II, which many people in 1974 remembered vividly if not fondly. And lest you think it was all voluntary, a surtax on high earners was proposed.

Of course, buttons, bags, earrings, sweaters, stickers, and other useless crapola was produced and distributed shamelessly, lots funded by taxpayers, thus contributing to inflation. When a ridiculous form enlisting the sucker as “an Inflation Fighter and Energy Saver for the duration” and committing him to do “the very best I can for America” was mailed to the president, the sender would receive a coveted WIN button. The USPS and button makers certainly appreciated the business.

But the WIN campaign was a loser. WIN buttons became objects of ridicule, often being worn upside down, as NIM, to stand for things like No Immediate Miracles and Need Immediate Money.

Even novice political hack Sen. Joe Biden Jr. of Delaware criticized Ford’s economic plan as trying to fight inflation with slogans. Perish the thought that Joe would ever resort to slogans for anything. Joe and I were in our early thirties back then and had dark hair. I vaguely recall that even I wrote something uncomplimentary about the WIN campaign in the dear old Torrington Register.

Alan Greenspan, of “irrational exuberance” fame, who at the time was Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, reluctantly lent his imprimatur to the WIN campaign. But he recalled in his memoir “The Age of Turbulence,” which came out in 2007, the year after Ford’s death, that when the idea was presented at the White House, he thought, “This is unbelievably stupid.”

In all events, the Whip Inflation Now campaign had been whipped to death by April 1975. Over half the country couldn’t afford WIN buttons.

So what about Joe Biden’s miraculous Inflation Reduction Act? Was the intent for the great unwashed to confuse it with Individual Retirement Accounts?