Reagan Aide Edwin Meese Coordinates with Heritage on "Mandate for Leadership"

Edwin Meese III, senior aide to Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign, makes a surprise appearance at a Heritage Foundation dinner honoring the team chairmen and co-chairmen working on the “Mandate for Leadership” project, demonstrating direct coordination between the Reagan campaign and Heritage’s privately-funded policy development effort months before the November election. Meese’s participation signals the campaign’s embrace of Heritage’s comprehensive 3,000-page policy blueprint being prepared by twenty project teams and over three hundred contributors, validating Heritage’s assumption that Reagan will win and implement their recommendations. This coordination represents the culmination of Powell Memo implementation - a privately-funded think tank, established in 1973 in direct response to Powell’s blueprint, producing detailed governing recommendations in coordination with a presidential campaign backed by the same corporate and plutocratic funding sources. The relationship between Meese and Heritage, which begins in this July 1980 meeting, will continue throughout the Reagan presidency, with Meese serving as Counselor to the President (1981-1985) and Attorney General (1985-1988) while implementing Heritage recommendations. This pre-election policy coordination between campaign and think tank establishes the template for future Republican transitions, institutionalizing the role of privately-funded policy organizations in shaping government operations.