Kick and Tell

...Stockman acted Anderson's part in preparing Reagan for the Presidential debate...

...The Pollyanna of 1981 has turned into the Cassandra of 1986...

...When told that the consequence would be a ballooning budget deficit, a stunned President Reagan said, "Dave, if what you're saying is true, then Tip O'Neill was right all along...

...To Stockman, Head Start pupils and Detroit automakers seem all of a piece—drags on pure capitalism...

...But the "bidding war" for holdout votes in Congress for the 1981 tax bill opened up so many loopholes—nay, floodgates— for tax breaks for sectional and industrial interests that the revenue base was truncated...

...Stockman appears from his own pages less a starry-eyed ideologue than a cynical manipulator of numbers, facts, and persons...

...Stockman acknowledges what the White House has long denied—that the budget deficit was viewed as a way of forcing cuts in programs...

...It was here, after an initial success in 1981, that Stockman, the irresistible force, ran into the immovable object that he calls "politics...

...That contributed to making the third unachievable...

...Stockman used the Daniel Schorr, a member of the Progressive's Editorial Advisory Board, is senior news analyst for National Public Radio in Washington...

...I'm not saying that at all...

...It was mine...

...When budget figures didn't add up right, they were replaced with other figures...

...They seek to bolster the less productive industries, regions, and citizens by taxing the wealth and income of everyone else...

...That, by Stockman's account, led to a fruitful association in which he frequently used Novak for anonymous attacks on Administration adversaries...

...When an economic forecast looked too bleak, it was discarded for what was smilingly called "Rosy Scenario...

...The revolution that he as budget director helped to set in motion was stopped in its tracks, he says, by "politics...

...Stockman, the numbers-cruncher who wanted to be a government-cruncher, had it right with his imaginary sign, "Stop me, I'm dangerous...

...With Government borrowing thirty cents for every seventy cents raised in taxes, he sees "economic upheaval" somewhere down the road...

...Or, "we are still putting money into local classrooms for the handicapped, the disadvantaged, the gifted, and almost everyone in between...

...Stockman recalls, "I stormed around my office, fuming over my mistake," but the multi-billion-dollar "mistake" remained enshrined in the Pentagon's budget...

...What Stockman means by politics is not simply special-interest lobbying, vote bartering, and campaign-money pressures, but the refusal of Congress to defy great constituencies of the veterans and the aging, or to turn its back on the infirm and the disadvantaged...

...The self-styled "radical ideologue" claims to have been the chief architect of the Reagan "Grand Doctrine...

...Profits from his kick-and-tell best-seller, however, assure Stockman's own economic future...

...Looking back, Stockman expresses not remorse for the damage he did to the nation, but amusement about his "grandiosity of a historical variety...

...Not in the slightest...

...He was too much a sucker for a hard-luck story and too willing to revert to cliches about saving money by cutting waste...

...As it emerges from the pages of this manic confession, the revolution was divided into three parts...

...In office he found the President appearing as "far above the detail work of supply side as a ceremonial monarch is above politics...

...That was partly because of Reagan's reflexive support for Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger's demands, but partly also because of haphazard miscalculation...

...In the 1981 reconciliation bill we did succeed in removing the working poor from the food stamp and welfare programs," but now the politicians "chip away, adding partial benefit restorations...

...In his recital of cynicism, disingen-uousness, and ineptitude in high places, Stockman does not spare himself...

...President, oh no...

...He made his debut with the Reaganites in 1980 by betraying his mentor, former Representative John Anderson, independent candidate for President...

...Stockman invented something called the "Magic Asterisk," a budget entry signifying a budget reduction to be made in the future-how, no one knew...

...Seeking to disarm the reader by self-deprecation, Stockman reveals himself as still the compulsive manipulator...

...wrong base year for calculating the planned buildup and "nearly had a heart attack" when he discovered that he had accepted a five-year military budget of $1.46 trillion—an annual increase of 10 per cent, or double what candidate Reagan had promised...

...It is important to read this inside story of an Administration still in office and the devastation it has wrought in the name of half-baked ideology...

...The more I flopped and staggered around, however, the more they [Reagan aides] went along...

...It would be a "powerful battering ram" that "would force Congress to shrink the Welfare State...

...To burrow his way into the Reagan Cabinet, Stockman inspired right-wing columnist Robert Novak to write, with no factual basis, that he was in line for a Cabinet appointment...

...Stockman says that he saw in the deficit "only the potential leverage it provided to further my Grand Doctrine, not its danger to the nation's finances...

...The tax revolution was designed as a "supply-side" program, sharply reducing income-tax rates to stimulate productivity...

...The detritus of disappointments that Stockman chronicles in The Triumph of Politics can be baffling...

...I could have been wearing a sandwich sign saying, Stop me, I'm dangerous...

...Stockman was "uneasy about playing the role of my former rabbi," he claims, "but what could I do...

...Stockman confesses, in harshly drawn vignettes strewn through the book, that he originally considered Reagan "a cranky obscurantist whose political base was barnacled by every kook and fringe group...

...W.B...

...That must be the nicest thing that anyone has said about politics in a long time...

...Had that been apparent at the time, it "would have caused an absolute panic," says Stockman...

...He writes: "I soon became a veritable incubator of shortcuts, schemes, and devices to overcome the truth now upon us—that the budget gap couldn't be closed except by a dictator...

...The expected revenue loss in 1990 was calculated at $2 trillion—twice what had been originally projected...

...When the budget director cried fiscal havoc, the President would respond with a cliche or anecdote...

...President Reagan, "too kind, gentle, and sentimental to lead a revolution," was of little help...

...The second revolution, in military buildup, was also overachic\ cd...

...The President had half a revolution in mind...

...He has given up on the Republican Party, whose "dirty little secret" is that it really supports the welfare state...

...Sadly, Stockman finally concluded about Reagan, "A drastic shrinking of the welfare state was not his conception of the Reagan Revolution...

...Even then, they might not have done so...

...The third revolution, and the one dearest to Stockman's heart, was to be the dismantling of the "welfare state," sweeping away generations of assistance and subsidy programs, paring the Government down to little more than a headquarters for defense and law and order, thus establishing pure capitalism in America...

...Social Security, trade protectionism, safety-net programs, UDAG [Urban Development Action Grants], and farm price supports all have one thing in common," he writes...

...Yeats Of all the crew who signed on for the Reagan Revolution, David Stockman was surely among the worst and the brightest...

...Two got out of control and succeeded wildly beyond plan and expectation...

...With military spending out of control upward and taxes out of control downward, domestic programs had to be cut deeply or deficits would skyrocket...

...by Daniel Schorr The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity...

...In a key budget session...

...Stockman quotes himself as replying, "Mr...