Reagan administration
In the White House, continuing to report to Edwin Meese, Anderson was appointed assistant to the president for policy development and given responsibility for domestic and economic policy. Anderson became known as the “conscience of the administration,” due to his insistence that policy decisions reflect campaign promises and Reagan's personal views. Anderson said his goals were “to keep the policy effort focused on those things that Reagan wanted done, and in the order he wanted to do them.”
Inspired by the economic policy advisory board developed by Richard V. Allen during the Reagan transition, Anderson developed the President's Economic Policy Advisory Board and invited economists who had worked on the Reagan campaign but did not join the administration, along with other outside experts, to serve on it. It was signed into existence on March 2, 1981, with Executive Order 12296. Reporting directly to the president, it was chaired by George P. Shultz and included distinguished economists Arthur Burns, Alan Greenspan, Milton Friedman, Paul McCracken, and William Simon Sr. Some White House economists, including Martin Feldstein and Murray Weidenbaum, asserted that the board had little influence. However, Anderson said the board played an important role in pushing the administration to enact tax cuts and go forward with deregulation. Anderson joined the board after leaving the White House in 1982 and remained a member until 1989.
In response to questions regarding the armed forces' ability to attract and retain enough adequately educated volunteers to operate the military's increasingly sophisticated weapons systems, President Reagan announced the formation of the Military Manpower Task Force on July 8, 1981, and appointed Anderson a member. The goal of the task force was to review “compensation, educational benefits, readiness, training and discipline, standards of enlistment, recruiting and retention, and draft registration.” It was in place for 14 months, and despite serious divisions between the civilian and military members of the task force, it concluded that the all-volunteer armed force was working.
In March 1982, desiring a return to the world of academia and writing as administration policy development slowed down, Anderson left the White House.
After leaving the White House, Anderson was appointed to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Deactivated during the Carter administration, the board was reestablished in 1981, at Richard V. Allen's request, with Executive Order No. 12331, which granted it the authority to “continually review the performance of all agencies of Government that are engaged in the collection, evaluation, or production of intelligence or the execution of intelligence policy [and] to assess the adequacy of management, personnel, and organization in the intelligence agencies.” Anderson's participation was terminated on October 31, 1985, when the board was restructured. He and other board members terminated at the same time believed that the board's restructuring might have played a role in the Iran-Contra affair.
In 1986, Anderson was nominated by Reagan to the President's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament. He served on the committee from 1987 to 1993 but noted that by the fall of 1987, it had fallen into disuse and had eight vacancies.
