The Triumph of Politics/The Real David Stockman
Shannon, William V.
Books: THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE DAVID STOCKMAN'S account of his THE TRIUMPH OF POLITICS divinity student, ex-congressional aide, four and one-half...
...Thanks to the half" I CANNOT revolution adopted in July 1981, more than a trillion dollars had alTELL A LIE- ready been needlessly added to our THIS ISN T national debt - a burden that will GOING TO WORK...
...A Flag for Sunrise Thessalonians: "Ye are all the children alliance with the upper class...
...In removing the action acters, the longing to attach oneself to a tual enthusiasm...
...Emily Dickinson expressed no urgency...
...the orthodox politicians were right...
...And again, than the author himself...
...most voters until their harmful conse- trait of post-sixties America that chroni- Therefore, let us not sleep, as do others...
...The published will give us as good a picture THE REAL DAVID STOCKMAN policies the two of them were to sell to of the inside workings of the Reagan ad- THE TRUE STORY OF AMERICA'S MOST Congress and the country in 1981 were a ministration...
...Washington wars gone off to make States...
...Its battles are played out on other In Stone's world, the other side of this money on Wall Street, puts some ironic shores...
...At thirty-four, this ex- by Washington's free-lunch joyride...
...Stone's ent, therefore, the Stockman book will be voices of its burnt-out cases...
...In A Hall of Mirrors (Ballantine his first novel, A Hall of Mirrors, and or real, continues to prevail, most of the Books, 1975), Dog Soldiers, (Houghton bas now returned to the image, from I middle class will maintain its political Mifflin, 1981...
...Reagan at a television rehearsal...
...Reagan appears in these pages as a symbolize for him the aimlessness that he Stone's obsession with the empty promman with a few stubbornly-held convic- perceives at the heart of American cul- ise each of us inherits emerges through tions and unaware of much that is going ture...
...the real star quest as far as I was conproduction have been permanently Reading Reinhold Niebuhr, Stockman cerned was (Irving) Kristol...
...Our national savings has been squandered to pay for a tax cut we could not afford...
...plague us indefinitely...
...Going to work for able a lover of ideas as Stockman into the stamps, Medicaid, and other social pro- John Anderson, "I became a kind of intellectual vacuum surrounding Ronald grams pushed several million persons adopted son to him...
...He discovers the Himself...
...I read come in any political circle...
...His distance between himself and his past...
...analysis...
...Flag for Sunrise...
...just as Central America is the heart of A thou a flag for me...
...Richard Nix- cial programs...
...It would have Robert Stone years is that we are now all part of this meant eliminating or drastically over- devastation...
...In this eerie vision of exile, Stone soullessness is inevitable violence...
...The banner on around him...
...For the pres- cles the country's decay through the but let us watch and be sober...
...For Stone, I'm doing or why I do it or what it's 23 May 1986: 305...
...and borrowed time...
...Each new generation born is hauling Social Security, Medicare, vet- Knopf, $17.95, 258 pp...
...The tax laws Wanniski "who reordered everything I events in recent political history...
...In describing his intel- of his novels from the land they address, common ground and be made to feel part lectual pilgrimage, Stockman, now at Stone captures the feeling of geographi- of a world that one has in no way been thirty-nine a battle-scarred veteran of the cal impunity that pervades the United equipped to see...
...This plea is somewhere Stockman's book can also be read as a Light, which is about Hollywood, takes in the minds of each of Stone's charcautionary tale on the dangers of intellec- place in Mexico...
...The high dollar exchange rate that has been required to attract so much foreign capital has devastated our agriculture, mining, and Commonweal: 304 manufacturing...
...Serene creates America at a distance...
...former colleagues, including the presi- The "Reagan Revolution" promised dent and most of the cabinet and White to increase spending substantially on naHouse staff, Greenya and Urban in brisk, nam draft as out of sense of religious tional defense, cut taxes, and balance the readable style are telling tales on him vocation, and made contacts there that budget...
...We had prosperity of a says, "the scales fell from my eyes as I tol was a secular incarnation of the Lord sort - but it rested on easy money turned those pages...
...He meets Jude Reagan was one of the more unfortunate below the poverty line...
...Sunrise, hast commands...
...Martin's, $15.95, 294 pp...
...Reagan seemed as far What separates Robert Stone's vision we are meant to carry now brings with it, above the detail work . . . as a ceremo- from most other novelists is that he as Lowell says, "the Serpent's seeds of nial monarch is above politics...
...Even Children of asks in her poem...
...quences become evident...
...Stockman, facile, intelligent, Nader's watchdog group...
...This was a trinity of nonsense...
...these characters' dissolution...
...David Stockman is in this televised debate...
...guises in each of his novels, has come to watchfulness is a drug-induced paranoia...
...Books: THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE DAVID STOCKMAN'S account of his THE TRIUMPH OF POLITICS divinity student, ex-congressional aide, four and one-half years as director of WHY THE REAGAN REVOLUTION FAILED and two-term congressman took charge the Office of Management and Budget of the nation's budget and tax policies...
...Huge, pro- (Knopf, 1981), and in his new novel, of the light, and the children of the day: longed deficits are an unreal problem to Children of Ligh,, he has given us a por- we are not of the night, nor of darkness...
...To me, Krislost...
...Austrian philosopher of the free market: Ideas are important and should be welI term this a "partial" indictment be- "I plunged into economics...
...asked for no information...
...depicts American power as an after- characters wait endlessly for something Nevertheless, his ideological hunger and tremor that devastates each foreign place to happen, but they haven't a clue as to his need to find a mentor are astonishing...
...While industrious, was the perfect sorcerer's Stockman in his memoir is savaging his William V. Shannon apprentice...
...We have consequently borrowed enormous amounts of foreign capital to make up for the shortfall between our national production and our national spending...
...Stone as seriously as he takes him- "Children of Light" as the epigraph to As long as the present prosperity, fake self...
...It It was appropriate that Stockman met is unlikely that any other book soon to be Harper & Row, $21.95, 411 pp...
...Jobs, capital, and the Politician as a Young Ideologue...
...In this book, Stockman writes that rush to power by ignorant, determined and quickly won publicity as an intelli- he was a year into the Reagan Revolution young men whose ambition exceeds their gent, articulate critic of government so- in November 1981 before he realized that experience and judgment...
...their about insiders...
...from Jude Wanniski, Representative won him a place on the staff of Con- Anderson said it could only be done "with Jack Kemp, and other ideologues who gressman John Anderson of Illinois...
...as much a victim of the unassailable erans' benefits, and subsidies to farmers Robert Jones American ideal as the lands we have and businessmen...
...But introcause Greenya and Urban would add that everything in sight...
...we inhabit, while the country itself re- what they expect...
...I emerged a dis- ducing so light-headed and impressionthe cutbacks in public service jobs, food ciple of F. A. Hayek...
...was 1970 and Stockman was twenty- before disappearing into the viceAmerica's open political culture exalts four...
...president and potential president at didate, in a series of rehearsals for their In his Epilogue, Stockman draws up a thirty-nine...
...He meets economist Arthur that no one recognizes that more clearly sumers were seriously weakened...
...Anderson's mannerisms, speech pat- cogently as anyone could: Born into a Michigan farming family, terns, and opinions on all issues, made an Just beneath the surface [in 19851, he graduated from Michigan State Uni- exceptionally effective stand-in...
...David A. Stockman (OMB) is the political book of the year...
...That proved politically failed to conquer...
...Political buffs will also CONTROVERSIAL POWER BROKER series of grand illusions, a triumph of the want to read the Greenya-Urban book John Greenya and Anne Urban actor's craft rather than of economic written by two members of Ralph St...
...Laffer, "a dazzling thinker...
...impossible, hence his title, "The O NE wants very much to take Robert Stone chose Robert Lowell's poem Triumph of Politics...
...I don't know what His book could be retitled, "Portrait of mains essentially unchanged...
...The on, for example, was a member of the In 1980, he met Ronald Reagan when tax cut was far too deep and built a strucHouse of Representatives at thirty-three, he agreed to serve as stand-in for Ander- tural deficit into the budget...
...The rewere also tilted to favor the rich, and had previously known or thought about deeming charm of Stockman's memoir is government regulations to protect con- economics...
...Stockman refers to a "half-revolution" because he believes that the budget could have been brought into balance if The other side of soullessness his anti-statist libertarian philosophy had been put into effect to produce a "lean, CHILDREN OF LIGHT the historical difference of the last twenty stingy" government...
...When the American economy was alversity in 1968, went to the Harvard Di- Reagan won, he named Stockman as Di- ready being twisted and weakened vinity School as much to escape the Viet- rector of OMB...
...George Bush, were once his closest allies...
...The figure characters never sleep, but then, most of read primarily for its gossipy revelations of the drifter, who, appears in different them are amphetamine freaks...
...It is vulnerable to a House from his own Michigan district ics...
...Vietnam is light," the fake illumination that reveals and passive, "he gave no orders, no the geographical center of Dog Soldiers, blindness instead of truth...
...Six years later, he was elected to the presidency, called it "voodoo economyouth and novelty...
...It blue smoke and mirrors...
...Stockman, knowing partial indictment of Reaganomics, as tradition...
...There was a senator at thirty-seven, and vice- son, now a third-party presidential can- no miracle in "supply side" economics...
Vol. 113 • May 1986 • No. 10
