O'Neill's Whine Isn't the First (Remember David Stockman?)

The Omaha World-Herald ^ | January 16, 2004 | James P. Pinkerton

[quidnunc]

The Republican president from the Sun Belt is portrayed as an amiable dunce. His lack of curiosity annoys his brainy adviser, who wants the chief executive to join him in wrestling with Big Issues. Eventually the brainiac aide is gone, taking with him a burning desire to get revenge in print.

This might sound like the story of Paul O'Neill, ex-Treasury secretary — he was fired by President Bush in December 2002 — who provided the raw, bitter meat for a new book, "The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill." O'Neill describes Bush's leading a Cabinet meeting as "like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people." Ouch.

But it's also the story of David Stockman, who was the director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1981-85, serving President Reagan. Stockman cut a dashing figure in Washington in those days. He was a Harvard man and a former congressman who considered the Gipper — and everyone else — to be his intellectual inferior. In 1986, he published his own memoir of disillusion, "The Triumph of Politics: Why The Reagan Revolution Failed." Two decades before O'Neill, Stockman had his own irksome experiences with the boss: "What do you do," he asked, "when your president ignores all palpable relevant facts and wanders in circles?"

Back then, the Stockman book hit with enormous force. Reagan's critics took it as proof that the 40th president was a fool and a failure. But now, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that Reaganomics was a huge success. After Reagan's huge tax cut, the economy recovered from the double-digit inflation of the late 1970s and went on to grow by one-third from 1981-89.

-snip-

[mac_truck]

Maybe the lesson of the 40th and 43rd presidents is that you don't have to be that smart to oversee an expanding economy. You simply have to be smart enough to see that the real economic genius is the free market itself.

Worth repeating.

[Rocky]

As I recall, what got Stockman fired was a discussion with a journalist, which Stockman later claimed he thought was "off the record". Reagan's tax cut was called the "trickle-down" theory. I believe the idea was that people who got a tax cut would spend more and invest more, which would benefit everyone, even those whose income is so low that they pay little or no tax. I think the verdict is in, and Reagan was right. But at the time, Reagan was taking heat, much as Bush is today, for helping the rich (that is, those who make enough to pay taxes).

Anyway, Stockman told the journalist something to the effect that "nobody really believes that that will work", while at the same time he was supposedly trying to get Congress to support the idea. As soon as that was published, Stockman was gone. Then, like O'Neill, he wrote a book. (Washington, D.C., is whine country.)

(If any of my facts are wrong, I'm sure other Freepers will happily correct me.)

[jwalburg]

Yes, a good conclusion. And a good item to remember!

[NCPAC]

Stockman spoke to Bill Grieder from The Atlantic Monthly. His main complaint was that you had to cut spending as well as taxes - and that Reagan wasn't cutting spending. Stockman also blasted Double R's "corporate welfare," which he believed needed to be slashed at least as much as welfare for the poor. He was very libertarian in his views on economics - the government shouldn't be spending on much of anything.

Stockman was not immediately gone after the story was published. In Reagan's words, Stockman was taken to "the woodshed" and allowed to retain his job. Stockman stayed on at OMB for a little while longer before leaving for (I think) Wall Street. His book came out a few years after he departed the Reagan Administration. While Stockman may have been wrong in his take on the theory of Reaganomics, he was dead-on as concerns philosophy: You must cut both spending and taxes.

[adam_az]

this is who wrote the article

[adam_az]

Stockman is the "Genius" whose idea of saving money was re-classifying ketchup as a vegetable.

[NCPAC]

I don't realize re-classifying ketchup as a vegetable (for school lunches) was Stockman's only idea on how to save money. You really do learn something new everyday, I guess.

[adam_az]

I don't realize re-classifying ketchup as a vegetable (for school lunches) was Stockman's only idea on how to save money. You really do learn something new everyday, I guess.

That's because your brain added the word "only," a word I didn't use in the post you replied to.

[adam_az]

Before you put me in the stockade for my comment, you should know that I don't have the highest opinion of Pinkerton, either. He should have disclosed in this article that he is also an ex-Reagan administration guy, though it wouldn't be quite so effective a hit piece if he had mentioned his past affiliation. I have a deep respect for Reagan, but some of the people in his administration I loathed. James "F the Jews!" Baker comes immediately to mind, as does that Caspar Weinberger.

[NCPAC]

You intimated as much. Besides, do you really have a problem with Stockman making every effort to cut spending?

[Rocky]

Thanks for your corrections to my earlier reply. It's been a long time, and I hadn't thought much about Stockman until this O'Neill affair.