Heritage Delivers First Mandate for Leadership to Reagan

The Heritage Foundation handed President-elect Ronald Reagan a 20-volume, roughly 3,000-page Mandate for Leadership containing more than 2,000 policy recommendations on his inauguration day. Heritage president Edwin Feulner had launched the project in 1979 after trustee Jack Eckerd proposed a conservative governing manual. Reagan distributed copies to every Cabinet member at their first meeting; Heritage later claimed nearly two-thirds of the recommendations were adopted.