Cheney reminisced about the pivotal scribble: “I remember a white linen napkin
because that is what Laffer drew the curve on. It is just one of those events
that sticks in my mind: it’s not every day you see somebody whip out a sharpie
and mark up a cloth napkin. I remember it well because I don’t think I had ever
seen anybody else drawing on a cloth napkin before.”
Laffer himself, however, says he doesn’t recall the episode at all:
“I personally do NOT remember the details of that evening we all spent
together. But Wanniski’s version could, so far as I know (not too far, I’m
afraid), well be true,” notes Laffer on page 291 of his essay Return to
Prosperity.
“My only reservation about Wanniski’s version of the story concerns the fact
that the “Two Continents” restaurant did use CLOTH napkins, and my mother
raised me NEVER to desecrate nice things,” notes Laffer. “Ah well, that is my
story and I am sticking to it.”
That’s not quite right, though – or ‘true,’ shall we say?
Wanniski has always maintained the napkin was a *paper* cocktail napkin. This
is particularly odd because he pocketed the paper napkin as a souvenir.
Wanniski’s wife later donated the “mythic” Laffer curve [cloth] napkin to The
Smithsonian. But the napkin that Mrs. Wanniski donated is cloth, not paper.
Stranger still, beneath the curve, Laffer wrote: “To Don Rumsfeld, at our Two
Continents Rendezvous,” even though Wanniski insists Rumsfeld was NOT at the
Two Continents that night (Laffer, however, says Rumsfeld *was* present). Even
*more* puzzlingly, Laffer dated the napkin “September 13, 1974” — two and a
half months *before* the December meeting that Cheney and Wanniski remember so
clearly. Could this legendary event have taken place *twice*? Rowena Itchon,
secretary to Laffer, commented: “Dr. Laffer drew on napkins when he had lunch
with many people.” So perhaps it’s Popper’s napkinS.
Cheers,
Speranza
