Joseph Jacobs Thorndikewas an American editor and writer. He was Managing Editor of Life for three years in the late 1940s, and a co-founder of American Heritage and Horizon magazines... (wikipedia)
When you talk about a tax plan that has to make it through Congress, you can't alienate the blue states, because you need a lot of red votes in blue states to get it passed.
What you had at that time was a president really interested in tax reform and a very skillful Treasury secretary (James Baker) interested in advancing the ideal.