BY KURT EICHENWALD
IT ALL STARTED in December 1974, on Dick Cheney’s cocktail napkin.
Four Republicans had gathered that night at a restaurant in Washington, D.C., and the conversation turned to economics and taxes. The group—Cheney, then the deputy White House chief of staff and the future vice president; Donald Rumsfeld, then the White House chief of staff and future defense secretary; and Jude Wanniski, an editor with The Wall Street Journal—watched in interest as the last member of their party, economist Arthur Laffer, scribbled a chart on what would become the napkin that changed America.