More than just a top-notch scholar, James Q. Wilson played a critical role in advising presidents, as Tevi Troy reminds us in a piece for The American:
Wilson actually served the Johnson White House before ever helping out a Republican president, serving as chairman of the White House Task Force on Crime in 1966. As Wilson himself noted, he voted for JFK, LBJ, and even did some work for Hubert Humphrey in 1968. Democrats have long had legions of academics on their side, though, and it was Wilson’s service to Republican presidents that really distinguished him in this arena. …
… Of all the presidents with whom he worked, Wilson probably had the greatest affinity for and connection with Ronald Reagan, even becoming the Ronald Reagan Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine—a title he no doubt appreciated. Wilson recognized Reagan’s political potential early on, writing an essay called “A Guide to Reagan Country” in Commentary. According to Tom Wolfe, “Wilson was the first writer to sense the power of Reagan’s constituency as it spread out of Southern California and up through the West, completely changing our politics.” …
… In the late 1990s, Wilson was one of a handful of outside advisers who helped George W. Bush develop his “compassionate conservative” platform. John DiIulio, a Wilson student and subsequent collaborator, served as the first director of Bush’s Faith-Based Office. Bush later awarded Wilson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2003, a well-deserved honor.
Wilson’s great advantage to conservatives was that he was both comfortable in and respected by the mainstream intellectual establishment, but he had a healthy skepticism of it as well. Once, Goldwin recalled pointing out a New York Times editorial on crime to Wilson, noting that he knew that “Wilson makes it a practice not to read the New York Times editorials (‘for the sake of his health.’)” Peggy Noonan noted that Wilson was Reagan’s kind of intellectual, since both Reagan and Wilson—along with Irving Kristol, Nat Glazer, and George Will—thought most American intellectuals “were among the most brilliant stupid people who had ever lived.”