Manhattan Institute at 25
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

It’s felicitous timing that tonight, just hours before the final presidential debate of this campaign season, the Manhattan Institute will host a dinner to mark its 25th anniversary and the publication of a book, “Turning Influence Into Intellect,” that tells the story of the think tank’s accomplishments.
Tonight’s debate, in Tempe, Arizona, is going to focus on domestic policy. It is hard to think of an idea on the domestic agenda being debated in this presidential election that has not been worked on, nurtured, or critiqued at this eminently New York institution.
One of the hottest topics, of course, is tort reform, which is discussed in the new volume in an article by Gordon Crovitz of Dow Jones and Company. The volume includes an article by Tom Wolfe reminding us of the fact that it was an Institute fellow, Elizabeth McCaughey, who, in 1993, wrote the article that led to the defeat of Hillary Clinton’s bid to nationalize the health care system.
Sam Tanenhaus recounts the “dazzle” when a Texas governor, George W. Bush, in October 1999, made his New York debut at an institute function, where he outlined his education plan. Then there is the tax debate, which is reprised in this volume in an article by Robert L. Bartley, the longtime editor of the Wall Street Journal, and a former member of his editorial board, Amity Shlaes, whose weekly column on the political economy appears in The New York Sun. As recently as today, the importance of tax cuts was underscored by the newest Nobel laureate in economics, Edward Prescott, who said, “Tax rates were not cut enough” by Mr. Bush.
These are only a few of the articles in the anniversary volume. For 25 years, New Yorkers have been enriched by the Manhattan Institute’s lunches, dinners, breakfasts, publications, and, in recent years, its magazine City Journal. So we join all New Yorkers in wishing for 25 more years, and then some.