[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.)

[adam_az]

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