Meredith Willson, Inflation Fighter

In 1974 Gerald Ford got the "Music Man" composer to write a song called "WIN" (i.e., "Whip Inflation Now"). It didn't work, but I've got the lyrics. You're welcome!

Meredith Willson, inflation fighter.

In 1974, as the Arab oil embargo drove the Consumer Price Index past 12 percent, President Gerald Ford gave a speech about the inflation emergency. It was … pathetic. Ford called for the issue to be reviewed at every level of government. Then he addressed ordinary Americans:

To help increase food and lower prices, grow more and waste less; to help save scarce fuel in the energy crisis, drive less, heat less. Every housewife knows almost exactly how much she spent for food last week. If you cannot spare a penny from your food budget--and I know there are many--surely you can cut the food that you waste by 5 percent.

Every American motorist knows exactly how many miles he or she drives to work or to school every day and about how much mileage she or he runs up each year. If we all drive at least 5 percent fewer miles, we can save, almost unbelievably, 250,000 barrels of foreign oil per day. By the end of 1975, most of us can do better than 5 percent by carpooling, taking the bus, riding bikes, or just plain walking. We can save enough gas by self-discipline to meet our 1 million barrels per day goal.

There was nothing wrong with any of these suggestions, but in the absence of any concrete action on the part of the federal government they couldn’t avoid seeming ridiculous. As my former Wall Street Journal editor Ron Shafer has written, Ford

slapped on a button as he continued. “The symbol of this new mobilization,” he said, is the button “which I am wearing on my lapel. It bears the single word ‘WIN.’ … I will call upon every American to join this massive mobilization and to stick with it until we do win as a nation.

WIN stood for “Whip Inflation Now,” and almost immediately it became a symbol of Ford’s ineffectiveness. WIN buttons appeared everywhere, and although I remember that quite well, I did not remember (until Ron reported it) that Meredith Willson, the famed composer of The Music Man (and, some have hypothesized controversially, the inventor of rap music), was enlisted by Ford to write an anti-inflation anthem. Ford probably got the idea from President John F. Kennedy, who’d enlisted Willson to write a song promoting physical fitness with the politically incorrect title “Chicken Fat.” The sub-cohort of Baby Boomers immediately preceding mine was tormented by this song in gym class. But I digress.

Willson titled his new song “WIN.” To my extreme frustration, I can’t find a recording of it on the internet, so I can’t tell you whether the great Robert Preston, star of The Music Man, who was called on to vocalize “Chicken Fat,” also recorded “WIN.” But here are the lyrics:

Win! Win! Win!

We'll win together,

Win together, That's, the true American way, today.

Who needs inflation?

Not this nation.

Who's going to pass it by?

You are, and so am I

Win together.

Lose? Never!

If you can win, so can I.

Obviously Willson’s best days were behind him. Anyway, it didn’t work. Inflation remained high, handing the 1976 election to Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter and the 1980 election to Republican challenger Ronald Reagan, who ushered in the conservative reaction to the New Deal from which liberals are still struggling to escape. (One cruel irony of the Reagan years is that inflation was finally conquered not by Reagan, who of course had no particular influence over inflation, but by Fed chair Paul Volcker, a Carter appointee.)

I bring all this up because former President Donald Trump is meeting today with the Business Roundtable and I’m hoping someone there will ask Trump where the hell he comes off criticizing inflation under Biden when it’s obvious that Trump’s economic policies are far more inflationary than Biden’s. That’s the subject of my latest New Republic piece (or anyway, one of its subjects). You can read it here.