John Cox wants to be your next president
By John Temple Ligon

Over coffee in the Capitol Cafe on Main Street, Republican John Cox took more than an hour to outline his campaign to snare his party's nomination for president. First and foremost, he is selling himself, his personal example of what America can nurture.

Cox grew up poor and fatherless in a South Chicago public housing project called Prairie Shores. It's still there at the corner of 33rd Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard, while a good many of Chicago's public housing projects have been torn down as failed experiments.

Cox worked and paid his way through Chicago Circle (Chicago's University of Illinois campus). He majored in both political science and accounting, and he graduated in two-and-a-half years. Quicker was cheaper.

He passed the CPA exam in short order, and he scored a position with Coopers & Lybrand, then one of the Big Eight firms. While he was with the big-time accounting firm, he attended law school at night, graduating first in his class and becoming a tax attorney.

Around 1977, Cox began to appreciate Ronald Reagan's run for the presidency. The combination idea of lower taxes and higher prosperity had an overwhelming appeal.

Reagan's 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act dropped the top rate from 70% to 50%, and the 1980s boom was on. In 1982, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was below 800, and in the past week it was knocking on 12,000.

Taking Reagan's tax arguments a few steps further, Cox is an ardent advocate of the Fair Tax, a national sales tax to replace the current tax code. Such action would eliminate the adversarial relationships citizens have with their federal government. There would be a tax on consumption, period.

Not a single-issue candidate, Cox also advocates school choice, giving the parents more say in their childrens' education. Education could use a little competition, maybe a lot of competition to be sure every kid gets a shot at a good school.

Cox shared his fears of the year 2030, roughly when Medicare and Social Security take 80% of the federal budget as it's currently structured and supported.

He likes the influence of the Chicago School, Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman's Chicago Boys who helped Chile put together a private account system for their retirement plans. This is not privatization, Cox insists, just private accounts.

Likewise, he is proud of his country's 40,000,000 people on a 401k plan. He just wishes another 100,000,000 would put together something similar.

Cox sees America as a beacon of hope, a shared prosperity for the world. It's a legacy from the most giving nation in the history of the world.

He really enjoyed his recent trip to Poland, where the American Embassy every morning experienced lines of Poles queuing up for the privilege to apply to move to America.

Oddly, the countries of eastern and central Europe, the former Soviet bloc, is where the best tax systems are in play. America's corporate tax rate is the highest of the bunch. Cox would make real tax reform his first presidential move, repealing the current U.S. tax code in its entirety.

Cox is a tennis player and a former tennis teaching pro. His older brother still is on the payroll in tennis. Cox met his wife on the tennis court. The White House courts haven't seen much executive use since JFK. Maybe some refurbishment is in order.