If ever there was a time to make an outside-the-box pick for secretary of the Treasury, it is now. And while it might be seen as symbolic, it is well beyond well-deserved, and would be an inspired pick for multiple righteous reasons. With that in mind, the person I believe to be the most worthy of such a selection is 94-year-old economist Thomas Sowell.
When I was a child of poverty, often living in majority-Black housing projects, I remember that parents would speak of Sowell bursting with pride. Come 1987, when I worked in the Reagan White House, staffer after staffer not only quoted the Harvard-educated Sowell on a regular basis, but believed him to be one of the best financial minds and political philosophers in the history of our nation.
Today, in 2024, my mixed-raced, highly educated nephews — among many other young people I know — still believe him to be the best financial mind and political philosopher in the country. They quote him to me on a regular basis.
Sowell, a Black man who overcame abject poverty and constant discrimination, served our nation as a Marine during the Korean war. He took night classes at Howard University while working odd jobs. He was accepted into Harvard University, from which he graduated magna cum laude in 1958. He earned his master’s in economics from Columbia University before getting his doctorate from the University of Chicago and then proceeding to teach at multiple prestigious universities.
He would go on to write 45 books and become a nationally syndicated columnist and a fellow at the Hoover Institution in the process. The man is a legend and a national treasure.
For decades, while favoring no political party — or, more accurately, holding both parties in disdain — this self-labeled libertarian has been the voice in the ear of every single conservative economist and thought-leader in America. He did not ride the wave of a movement. He was the movement.
Like Elon Musk, he is a once-in-a-century mind. And also like Musk, because he dared to speak out against the orthodoxy of the left and far-left, he was censored, smeared, ostracized and discriminated against regularly. Rather than debate Sowell in the arena of ideas, many on the left sought to ban his voice.
There is a line in the original “Star Wars” film, delivered by Princess Leia, which applies to Sowell, Musk and President-elect Donald Trump with regard to censorship coming from the left: “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.” For decades, Sowell created the “star systems” that slipped through the fingers of the censoring and smearing left. Long before the MAGA movement, Sowell was creating various movements on his own that influenced independent, pragmatic thinkers the world over.
To be sure, Sowell was not sold on then-businessman Trump when he first ran in 2016. But over time, he came to believe him the better candidate against Hillary Clinton. He even went so far as to defend Trump against the false charges of racism leveled by the left.
One of the many reasons I have long believed Trump to be the most successful and qualified president of our lifetimes is because of his massive, decades-long real-world experience. Another major reason is his proven capacity to embrace those who may have disagreed with him in the past.
Trump has regularly looked past the politics of the moment to see power in the people. All people.
During the 2024 campaign — unlike so many Republicans candidates before him — candidate Trump eagerly took his message of common-sense reforms into blue states, blue cities and Black communities. And because he did, he was rewarded with record-breaking margins in those areas.
How wonderful would it be for those people and those communities to see Sowell named secretary of the Treasury. Not as a symbolic choice, but because he is finally being rewarded for being arguably the greatest economic mind in the history of our nation. A man who overcame the worst of our nation time and again; who never gave up; who never bent; and then went on to achieve — and personify — the American Dream.
Sowell is a movement. Every conservative, pragmatic and independent-thinking economist or political philosopher should paraphrase Issac Newton and declare: “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Thomas Sowell.”
We may never see his greatness again. How wonderful would it be to have him recognized — even for one day — with such an appointment.
Douglas MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official.
