Poor Ronald Reagan. Not only does he have to suffer the insults of intemperate wildmen such as Qaddafi, but he has to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous books written by persons once close to him who trade on their association to “tell all” with disparaging and mischievous detail.
Years ago, a high school girl complained to Ann Landers, “I let my boyfriend kiss me, and now he’s told it all over school. What shall I do?” Ann replied, “Consider yourself lucky that all your boyfriend did was to kiss and tell. Most men kiss and exaggerate.”
This aphorism explains the Patti Davis novel about the man who became Governor and then President. It also explains the kiss-and-exaggerate book by the male Patti Davis, David Stockman, who was paid $2.4 million for his disloyalty.
Stockman titled his book “The Triumph of Politics; Why the Reagan Revolution Failed.” It should be called “Why Stockman’s Egotism, Arrogance, and Ignorance of Politics Caused Big Deficits to Continue.”
The principal purpose of the book seems to be to portray Stockman as the Wizard of Budgetry and everyone else in the Reagan Administration as stupid, bumbling, petty, rude, and foul-mouthed. Stockman labored hard to unleash a string of colorful put-downs to describe his contempt for President Reagan and members of his Administration.
President Reagan gave Stockman one of history’s greatest opportunities — the chance to bring about a real reduction in Federal spending and power. The sorry saga of Stockman’s stewardship is summed up in the words of the poet, “Of all sad thoughts of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘it might have been.'”
Stockman criticizes Reagan for having “only a vision” of how to cut back Federal spending but “no concrete program.” Sorry, David, it was your job to provide the concrete program to fulfill Reagan’s vision, and you blew it because you didn’t know how to get from here to there.
Apparently, you thought the budget was a mathematical problem that could be solved with a calculator. It isn’t. It is a political-economic-social-public relations problem, and because you didn’t understand that, you failed in your assignment.
You apparently believed that, because you can dazzle with financial jargon, use a calculator, and talk more glibly about billions and trillions than most of your peers, you should have been vested with a dictator’s authority to do whatever you wanted with the Federal budget regardless of the consequences. Sorry, David, our American Republic was not designed to vest carte blanche in the elite and the experts.
It might have all been so different if Stockman had understood how this country functions with its ingenious interlacing institutions of separation of powers, local politics, and public relations. The one true conclusion in Stockman’s book is his admission: “I wasn’t wise enough. I had been in Congress four years but I didn’t learn anything about politics.”
But that’s no excuse for his colossal failure to fulfill Reagan’s promise to bring Federal spending under control. It was just as culpable of Stockman to launch his proposed budget cuts in a political vehicle that could not withstand the political blast-off as it was of NASA to send up the Challenger with defective booster seals.
Stockman deserves the blame for the incredible mismanaging of the Social Security issue in 1981 and 1982, which was the principal cause of Republican losses in the Congressional elections that year. He mistakenly thought Social Security was a fiscal problem, whereas it is primarily a political problem.
Stockman calls himself a “supply-side intellectual.” Anybody who thinks you can sell an ideology called “supply side” to a people accustomed to such slogans as “New Deal,” “New Frontier,” and “Great Society,” shows why an intellectual is sometimes defined as “a man educated beyond his intelligence.”
Contrary to Stockman’s book, the Reagan Revolution has not failed. It is true that the Reagan Administration failed to cut Federal spending as the Reagan ideology should have demanded — and that was Stockman’s fault.
But the Reagan Revolution means so much more than dollars and cents. The Reagan Administration has succeeded in building a new attitude toward America, the family, and the world. Today, when a new problem surfaces, the first response is no longer (as it was in the preceding decades), “Let’s set up a new Federal bureau and raise taxes.” Today when an international crisis occurs, the reaction is no longer indecision and retreat, it is an image of greatness and leadership for America.
