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The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed
Overview
The controversial bestseller on the failure of the Reagan Revolution.
Editorial Review: Library Journal
This memoir is a bitter review of Stockman's years in the Reagan Administration. It is a book with few heroes and many fools. The author claims naivete as his excuse. Although the narrative is somewhat confusing, overall, its backstage view of policymaking leaves one discouraged, even frightened by the superficiality. The book is a necessary library purchase for two reasons: the notoriety of the book and its author, and the insider's view of key policies still in place and key personalities still in power. Richard C. Schiming, Economics Dept., Mankato State Univ., Minn.
Political Studies, American Studies
The controversial bestseller on the failure of the Reagan Revolution.
Editorial Review: Library Journal
This memoir is a bitter review of Stockman's years in the Reagan Administration. It is a book with few heroes and many fools. The author claims naivete as his excuse. Although the narrative is somewhat confusing, overall, its backstage view of policymaking leaves one discouraged, even frightened by the superficiality. The book is a necessary library purchase for two reasons: the notoriety of the book and its author, and the insider's view of key policies still in place and key personalities still in power. Richard C. Schiming, Economics Dept., Mankato State Univ., Minn.
Political Studies, American Studies
422 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1986
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About the author
David A. Stockman
10 books50 followersDavid Alan Stockman is a former U.S. politician and businessman, serving as a Republican U.S. Representative from the state of Michigan (1977–1981) and as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (1981–1985).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
March 14, 2024
19 Jan. 2017 - My thoughts 30 years after reading this book:
1. It was a gripping and exemplary history of how this OMB Director in the first Reagan term actually tried to implement Reagan's proposed cuts in the Fed. budget and departments.
2. It showed how most of Reagan's cabinet appointees were far from part of the process to cut the budget, but were rather on the "receiving end" of the cuts, and not happy or supportive.
3. Weinberger (Defense) AND Haig (State) were particularly egregious offenders of Reagan's overall policy of cutting government, and purposely intimidated Stockman and his allies (Paul Craig Roberts and Martin Anderson) to stem any cuts in their departments.
4. Stockman made a very solid case for all the cuts. I have very warm memories of his vigor and comprehension of the need for and desirability of the cuts. From what I remember, he laid out the overwhelming benefits to society from the cuts, far outweighing the downsides to specific bureaucrats or other constituencies.
5. The main problem I had with the book was that it showed that Stockman never understood that any tax increases, which he advocated, would be totally counter-productive to the cuts in spending, and would slow down the economy and needed recovery. He thought tax increases were important, combined with the cuts in spending, to balance the budget. He totally ignored (probably more a fundamental misunderstanding than ignorance) that any increase in taxes would counter the forces for economic freedom and growth of the economy. Making the government smaller overall and especially a smaller part of the economy is key to continuing growth, productivity, innovation, justice and freedom. You know, aren't these the very things that people immigrated to America for, fought a revolution to preserve and prospered under over a span of more than 200 years?
6. For these reasons above, I remember loving and hating the book, depending on the passage. I remember the first half or more being the good part - description of his life and the spending cuts process, though frustrating in many ways, because of the opposition from Reagan's own appointees. The second half was his realization that the cuts would not be deep enough, that "politics" was getting in the way, so deficits and increases to the national debt would be coming. At this point his personal turn from the Reagan Admin. was to announce this to Congress and the Press(?) and also to support tax increases. The famous "taken out to the wood shed" scene played out, where Reagan had to fire him, was described from personal experience.
So - I highly recommend the book for historical insight, and for Stockman's excellent explanations of the benefits and need for government spending cuts, and for knowing just the kind of person Stockman is. Being aware of the massive flaw in Stockman is demonstrated by the later parts of the book and exhibited in his later career in investment banking and trying to own/run an auto parts manufacturer. It seemed to me an incredible betrayal, within Stockman's own philosophy or at least to general economics freedom principles, to have misunderstood the importance of tax cuts so fundamentally.
-------------
Stockman went on to work in investment banking with Peter Peterson, another even more dubious character, at Blackstone Group. His record there was mixed, but then he went on to found his own Investment group, which did fine for a while, but then invested in an auto industry supplier, and went bankrupt during one of the inevitable and fairly well documented difficult industry extended down-turns.
After some significant time, he came back, with a splash, and started speaking and writing about the looming problem of government spending and the deficit. He had found out about and studied, to some extent, Free Market/Austrian Economics in the meantime, and so his arguments for cutting government spending are even more powerful and insightful now.
HOWEVER, he still appears to be hung-up and totally confused on the issue of taxes and the "morality" of the deficit/debt. I remember reading and seeing interviews he granted just before and after his new book release on this subject (with Bill Moyers) and my being incredibly disgusted, especially in light of his increased knowledge and articulation of Austrian insights, in how the business cycle works. He cannot plead ignorance of the better ideas at all now.
So, anyone who reads Stockman should be totally aware of this horrible dichotomy between his good side and bad side. For me, the good does in no way outweigh the bad, especially since he has been exposed to and had plenty of time and opportunities to fathom and absorb the reality and true morality of the situation.
2024-03-14 edited for clarity and because of the new contrast we have between him/Reagan and Javier Milei's amazing work in Argentina to turn things around there.
1. It was a gripping and exemplary history of how this OMB Director in the first Reagan term actually tried to implement Reagan's proposed cuts in the Fed. budget and departments.
2. It showed how most of Reagan's cabinet appointees were far from part of the process to cut the budget, but were rather on the "receiving end" of the cuts, and not happy or supportive.
3. Weinberger (Defense) AND Haig (State) were particularly egregious offenders of Reagan's overall policy of cutting government, and purposely intimidated Stockman and his allies (Paul Craig Roberts and Martin Anderson) to stem any cuts in their departments.
4. Stockman made a very solid case for all the cuts. I have very warm memories of his vigor and comprehension of the need for and desirability of the cuts. From what I remember, he laid out the overwhelming benefits to society from the cuts, far outweighing the downsides to specific bureaucrats or other constituencies.
5. The main problem I had with the book was that it showed that Stockman never understood that any tax increases, which he advocated, would be totally counter-productive to the cuts in spending, and would slow down the economy and needed recovery. He thought tax increases were important, combined with the cuts in spending, to balance the budget. He totally ignored (probably more a fundamental misunderstanding than ignorance) that any increase in taxes would counter the forces for economic freedom and growth of the economy. Making the government smaller overall and especially a smaller part of the economy is key to continuing growth, productivity, innovation, justice and freedom. You know, aren't these the very things that people immigrated to America for, fought a revolution to preserve and prospered under over a span of more than 200 years?
6. For these reasons above, I remember loving and hating the book, depending on the passage. I remember the first half or more being the good part - description of his life and the spending cuts process, though frustrating in many ways, because of the opposition from Reagan's own appointees. The second half was his realization that the cuts would not be deep enough, that "politics" was getting in the way, so deficits and increases to the national debt would be coming. At this point his personal turn from the Reagan Admin. was to announce this to Congress and the Press(?) and also to support tax increases. The famous "taken out to the wood shed" scene played out, where Reagan had to fire him, was described from personal experience.
So - I highly recommend the book for historical insight, and for Stockman's excellent explanations of the benefits and need for government spending cuts, and for knowing just the kind of person Stockman is. Being aware of the massive flaw in Stockman is demonstrated by the later parts of the book and exhibited in his later career in investment banking and trying to own/run an auto parts manufacturer. It seemed to me an incredible betrayal, within Stockman's own philosophy or at least to general economics freedom principles, to have misunderstood the importance of tax cuts so fundamentally.
-------------
Stockman went on to work in investment banking with Peter Peterson, another even more dubious character, at Blackstone Group. His record there was mixed, but then he went on to found his own Investment group, which did fine for a while, but then invested in an auto industry supplier, and went bankrupt during one of the inevitable and fairly well documented difficult industry extended down-turns.
After some significant time, he came back, with a splash, and started speaking and writing about the looming problem of government spending and the deficit. He had found out about and studied, to some extent, Free Market/Austrian Economics in the meantime, and so his arguments for cutting government spending are even more powerful and insightful now.
HOWEVER, he still appears to be hung-up and totally confused on the issue of taxes and the "morality" of the deficit/debt. I remember reading and seeing interviews he granted just before and after his new book release on this subject (with Bill Moyers) and my being incredibly disgusted, especially in light of his increased knowledge and articulation of Austrian insights, in how the business cycle works. He cannot plead ignorance of the better ideas at all now.
So, anyone who reads Stockman should be totally aware of this horrible dichotomy between his good side and bad side. For me, the good does in no way outweigh the bad, especially since he has been exposed to and had plenty of time and opportunities to fathom and absorb the reality and true morality of the situation.
2024-03-14 edited for clarity and because of the new contrast we have between him/Reagan and Javier Milei's amazing work in Argentina to turn things around there.
September 14, 2017
The author, David Stockman, was the primary implementer of supply side economics during the early Reagan years. As director of Office of Management and Budget he found himself butting heads with special interest forces that were corrupting his supply side ideology. He became greatly alarmed at projections of exploding deficits due to steep tax cuts that were not compensated for by commensurate spending cuts. On the plus side the initial stimulus did get the economy moving for a few years. On the negative side the huge government debt we have today began growing exponentially under Reagan, hence the subtitle of the book - Why The Reagan Revolution Failed.
My own take on this is that many small government ideologues don't mind the huge government debt because it is a standing reason to keep pushing small government. There are two buttons these ideologues like to push, button one is tax cuts (primary reason for large government debt) and button two is small government (primary solution to address government debt). Thus this ideology can butter its bread on both sides.
Fast forward to today, and we find the same ideology out there despite thirty some years showing it is a failed, and surreptitiously corrupt ideology. The ideology goes like this - Let's cut taxes because this is pro growth and the tax cuts will more than pay for themselves - To address government debt let's underfund government, but don't underfund government programs that my political base likes - and oh by the way, give most of those tax cuts to the wealthy because this will trickle down to the middle class and beyond. So we have a circular logic that all government is ineffective and inefficient, and we can choke the beast with underfunding which makes things even worse, thus further justifying the initial premise that all government is ineffective and inefficient.
The last major tax overhaul was done under Reagan. Since then the "rocket science" tax code has grown to more than 60,000 pages as special interests weighed in. We do need to overhaul the tax code again, but I fear history will repeat itself the overhaul will not be balanced for the common good over the long haul.
My own take on this is that many small government ideologues don't mind the huge government debt because it is a standing reason to keep pushing small government. There are two buttons these ideologues like to push, button one is tax cuts (primary reason for large government debt) and button two is small government (primary solution to address government debt). Thus this ideology can butter its bread on both sides.
Fast forward to today, and we find the same ideology out there despite thirty some years showing it is a failed, and surreptitiously corrupt ideology. The ideology goes like this - Let's cut taxes because this is pro growth and the tax cuts will more than pay for themselves - To address government debt let's underfund government, but don't underfund government programs that my political base likes - and oh by the way, give most of those tax cuts to the wealthy because this will trickle down to the middle class and beyond. So we have a circular logic that all government is ineffective and inefficient, and we can choke the beast with underfunding which makes things even worse, thus further justifying the initial premise that all government is ineffective and inefficient.
The last major tax overhaul was done under Reagan. Since then the "rocket science" tax code has grown to more than 60,000 pages as special interests weighed in. We do need to overhaul the tax code again, but I fear history will repeat itself the overhaul will not be balanced for the common good over the long haul.
August 31, 2015
At times, this book came off as one of the most insightful political memoirs I've ever read, and at others, it seemed a soporific swirl of disconnected numbers and politicians.
David Stockman certainly gets points for writing that rarest of memoirs, a mea culpa, and his heartfelt agony, and there is no other word for it, at the unprecedented deficits his early policies and plans produced is earnest and even touching. Sometimes, the book's apologies can even veer into narcissism, since Stockman (the chief of Reagan's Office of Management and Budget) portrays himself as the single-handed engineer of Reagan's tax cuts and budgets. Yet he does make a good case that his injection into the Reagan administration pushed it in a different and perhaps dangerous path.
Reagan took on Stockman at the behest of Stockman's former mentor, the supply-side congressman Jack Kemp, and he never fit comfortably in Reagan's California troika of James Baker, Ed Meese, and Mike Deaver. Despite Reagan's soaring anti-government rhetoric, he and his aides remained believers in tax and management reforms as a solution to most of the country's ills. Reagan himself endlessly repeated an anecdote from his time as California governor, relating how they saved thousands of dollars by buying bigger file cabinets which allowed people to save time filing. Stockman futilely tries to convince the President and his aides that the federal budget was made up mainly of transfers to citizens and not bureaucratic file cabinets, and finds them surprisingly uninterested in cutting these major budget busters. Reagan himself just didn't have the personality of a revolutionary, usually pleading with his aides to make a compromise down the middle, or hold off on draconian cuts for the nonce. This combined with the obstreperous Congress and the burgeoning tax cuts, which Reagan was enthusiastic about, caused the deficits that gave Stockman such heartburn.
Stockman's revelation and apology is not about the failure of his small government, supply side beliefs (although he never believed that tax cuts paid for themselves), but about the practicality of implementing them in America's fractured democratic system. He finds that every new Cabinet appointment, from Commerce's Mac Baldridge to Dick Schweiker at HHS, became enthralled by the necessity of every dollar spent in their bailiwick, and all the supposedly conservative congressmen and women had their own pet subsidies to protect. When he spared Jesse Helm's tobacco program, he also had to spare Howard Baker's Clinch Breeder nuclear reactor. As Stockman says, "Sacred cows run in herds" (just one example of the wonderful quippiness Stockman displays throughout).
To get the "Gramm Latta II" budget reconciliation bills through Congress, Stockman had to agree to everything from pulling $100 million for Jim Leach's family planning program out of the health block grant to adding Conrail subsidies. Although they won a nominal "budget cut," it was mainly a pyrrhic victory with minimal long term effects. Likewise, to pass the Reagan tax cut over the Democratic alternative, they had to agree to everything from oil windfall tax credits to Russell Long's Employee Stock Ownership Plans, again exploding the cost of the cut. The end result (although the book often gets bogged down in the details), is that Stockman's radical push for extreme budget cuts and extreme tax cuts became mired in deal-making, and cost far more than he could have first imagined.
Another, less emphasized message of the book is the budgetary havoc caused by the ending of the Great Inflation. In the early pages, Stockman reminds the reader that the Reagan Revolution was perhaps as much about restoring "sound money" as reining in the size of government, and that Reagan's support for Fed Chairman Paul Volcker's drastic monetarist medicine was an essential part of his agenda. Yet Stockman also shows that the old inflation was artificially boosting government revenue (through "bracket creep" and other effects), and that the new disinflation therefore amplified Reagan's proposed tax cut, producing almost double the loss in revenue. Innumerable other federal programs were also budgeted in terms of rampaging inflation, and when this kept decreasing, even the approved spending cuts evaporated, as the real value of the spending increased. As Stockman argues, Reagan could not have both massive tax cuts and the disinflation he desired at the same time, any more than he could have tax cuts and a balanced budget without massive spending cuts he wasn't willing to push. Stockman doesn't emphasize enough how difficult it was budgeting in the midst of unprecedented monetary headwinds, but Volcker remains the great and often-unmentioned Svengali behind the administration's bleeding budgets.
The last half of this book, with it's increasingly shrill and repetitive cries about pork-hungry politicians' failures, can be done without, but the first is a wonderful and insightful education about politics, idealism, and their intersection.
January 14, 2015
Rarely would I suggest to start reading a book at the back end, but I do not hesitate to do so with this one. It is in the last two chapters (Epilogue: The Triumph of Politics, Appendix: The Fiscal Facts) that Stockman succintly tells the crux of this 450 page tome about the $1 trillion fiscal calamity of the Reagan era.
Those readers who would then be intrigued to learn minutiae of dealings of the White House with its cabinet and the Congress during the first five years of the "Reagan revolution", there are 400 pages on which Stockman herds you through meetings and billions with a plethora of names many may already have forgotten or never heard about.
Stockman's book is a sort of confession, but garnished with lambasting of almost every person in the power game of the time. What I failed to find in this cynical mea culpa filled with vertiginous figures, is a comprehensible and objective picture of budgets in question. He vehemently operates with staggering figures and hard principles, but offers very little human perspective to them. While he condemned various farm subsidies, he never took trouble to add his father's (he was a farmer) view and experience.
According to Hedrick Smith (The Power Game) Stockman's contract for this book was worth 2-2.4 million in 1986 dollars (must be about $5 million today). Not bad for a timely public denouncement of Ronald Reagan, Republican party and most of the political elite. And the media that he accuses of not seeing through much of the political rhetorics.
In short, it is quite an interesting book written by a highly literate author, but 30 years after it was written it is not satisfying enough to claim I really liked it. However, I do not regret my fight through all of it. For anyone with real interest it is worth the trouble.
Those readers who would then be intrigued to learn minutiae of dealings of the White House with its cabinet and the Congress during the first five years of the "Reagan revolution", there are 400 pages on which Stockman herds you through meetings and billions with a plethora of names many may already have forgotten or never heard about.
Stockman's book is a sort of confession, but garnished with lambasting of almost every person in the power game of the time. What I failed to find in this cynical mea culpa filled with vertiginous figures, is a comprehensible and objective picture of budgets in question. He vehemently operates with staggering figures and hard principles, but offers very little human perspective to them. While he condemned various farm subsidies, he never took trouble to add his father's (he was a farmer) view and experience.
According to Hedrick Smith (The Power Game) Stockman's contract for this book was worth 2-2.4 million in 1986 dollars (must be about $5 million today). Not bad for a timely public denouncement of Ronald Reagan, Republican party and most of the political elite. And the media that he accuses of not seeing through much of the political rhetorics.
In short, it is quite an interesting book written by a highly literate author, but 30 years after it was written it is not satisfying enough to claim I really liked it. However, I do not regret my fight through all of it. For anyone with real interest it is worth the trouble.
March 28, 2011
I don't know about others, but I do enjoy well written "insider" accounts of what happens in politics is intelligently and honestly done. Indeed, I have sometimes thought of developing a political science class where such works would serve as textbooks. If I ever had the courage tyo follow through, this would be on the short list. Stockman was one of President Reagan's top person on his economic team. And, over time, he began to raise questions about economic policy. This book ios his reflections on the process.
I think that this is a fine volume, written by an insider.
I think that this is a fine volume, written by an insider.
December 13, 2024
Did not realize how much of a fiscal failure the Reagan Revolution actually was. Decent read and informative, kinda paints RR as a simpleton the entire time and lots of beating a dead horse. Could’ve been 150 pages shorter. Interesting to read it now and draw some parallels between the modern “movement” to streamline gov expenditures (Elon/Doge etc). Stockman was a sharp guy but clearly outmatched politically. Would not want to get stuck talking to him at a dinner party to say the least. Glad I didn’t submit this one to the group lol
August 25, 2023
I need a bit more of a 30,000 foot view before I can appreciate many of the administration-specific issues, there are a lot of minutiae. But it is difficult to look at the legacy of stagnation of real wages, rising inequalities, bankruptcies due to medical bills, and the hollowing-out of rural livelihoods as desirable outcomes, no matter how ideologically pure they might be as expressions of the "rational movement of capital". Societies are obviously more than the movement of money, and Stockman's ideology placed money as the final arbitrator of what is "good" policy. The ideology claims this approach is morality-free, but nothing is: there, morality is reduced to ledger balances.
Many social democracies outside the US are roaring along and have no problems creating new businesses, growing domestic businesses into international powerhouses, and competing with the US. Maybe readers don't remember what it was like in the US before the EPA was in place; I certainly do, with stinking rivers, belching cars, localised cancers. I wonder how long a pure-market approach would have taken to clean that up? It's what had gotten us there in the first place. Reducing support for black-lung programs? Eliminating the minimum wage? wtf Stockman wtf...
Many social democracies outside the US are roaring along and have no problems creating new businesses, growing domestic businesses into international powerhouses, and competing with the US. Maybe readers don't remember what it was like in the US before the EPA was in place; I certainly do, with stinking rivers, belching cars, localised cancers. I wonder how long a pure-market approach would have taken to clean that up? It's what had gotten us there in the first place. Reducing support for black-lung programs? Eliminating the minimum wage? wtf Stockman wtf...
January 1, 2016
I loved this book. A gripping and fascinating insider's account of the battles surrounding the early Reagan budgets, by the architect of those budgets. I read this many years ago, and it changed forever my perceptions and understanding of the federal budget process. Very interesting book.
October 9, 2016
An excellent view on what it's like to try to get something done in Washington. Stockman spares no detail and plays no favorites.
June 1, 2023
“The Triumph of Politics: How the Reagan Revolution Failed,” by David A. Stockman is a book Republicans should read and will not read.
The book is probably longer and more complex than it needs to be. The big picture is the dueling delusions between President Ronald Reagan and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1981 to 1985, David Stockman.
Reagan’s delusion was economic. He believed that it was possible to cut taxes, raise military spending, and balance the budget without cutting or eliminating popular domestic spending programs. Reagan thought all that would be necessary would be to eliminate “waste, fraud, and abuse.”
Stockman’s delusion was political. He knew that it was impossible to cut taxes, raise military spending and balance the budget without eliminating farm and business subsidies, and without cutting Social Security, Medicare, and military pensions by twenty five percent. He came to his position in the Reagan administration believing that it would be politically possible to make those cuts.
Reagan never learned, and left office in 1989 mystified that his administration saw the largest peacetime increase in the national debt in American history.
Stockman did learn. He ended his book writing:
“Those are the reasons we are spending 24 percent of GNP, compared by raising only 19 percent of GNP in taxes. They are also the reason why the White House and the Republican Party should not have told the American electorate in 1984 that we don’t have to raise taxes. It wasn’t true.”
In the following passages from his book Stockman reveals his condescending attitude about Reagan’s intelligence:
---------
Reagan had outsmarted us by speaking to the President in the language the President understood: the folksy Readers’ Digest anecdote.
---------
“I don’t want to hear any more talk about taxes,” he insisted. “The problem is deficit spending.”
It is difficult politely to correct the President of the United States when he has blatantly contradicted himself. The $800 billion worth of deficits were the result of the spending he didn’t want to cut.
---------
The president did not grasp the difference between constant dollars in current (inflated) dollars.
---------
Stockman still had a few things to learn himself. For example the stagflation that began in 1974 was not caused by Keynesian economic policies. It was caused by increases in the world price of petroleum that resulted from the OPEC Oil Embargo of 1973, and the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
Republicans have never liked Keynesian economic policies because they shifted wealth, power, and prestige from the business community to the government. Nevertheless, the Great Depression was not caused by a shortage of a natural resource that were essential to the U.S. economy. Also, during the Great Depression the problem was not inflation, but deflation.
Stockman also thinks that Republican economic policies are more conducive to economic growth than Democratic economic policies.
The United States Department of Commerce has a chart that shows fluctuations in the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) in 1996 dollars from 1920 to 2002.
http://www.singularity.com/charts/pag...
From 1921 to 2000 we had Republican presidents for forty years and Democrat presidents for forty years. The chart demonstrates that under Democrat presidents there was more economic growth in the per capita GDP than there was under Republican presidents. This is most obvious when we compare the Republican presidencies of Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover, with the Democratic presidents of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
For example, from 1921 to 1932 we had Republican presidents. During this time the per capita GDP declined from $5,758 to $4,901. We had the Democratic presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman from 1933 to 1952. During this time the per capita GDP increased from $4,904 to $11,980.
There were also more gains under other most Democratic presidents than Republican presidents.
There has usually been more job creation under Democratic presidents than Republican presidents. Under President Carter an average of 260,000 jobs were created every year. Under President Reagan this declined to 200,000 jobs per year. Under President Clinton this grew to 290,000 jobs per year.
https://www.democraticunderground.com...
According to a Nov 6, 2012 article in The Wall Street Journal, "Since 1900, the Dow has averaged a 7.8% annual gain under Democratic presidents, compared with a 3% annual gain under Republicans,”
http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2012/...
“The Triumph of Politics” shows how under the Reagan administration the national debt became the problem that now threatens the United States with economic disaster.
The book is probably longer and more complex than it needs to be. The big picture is the dueling delusions between President Ronald Reagan and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1981 to 1985, David Stockman.
Reagan’s delusion was economic. He believed that it was possible to cut taxes, raise military spending, and balance the budget without cutting or eliminating popular domestic spending programs. Reagan thought all that would be necessary would be to eliminate “waste, fraud, and abuse.”
Stockman’s delusion was political. He knew that it was impossible to cut taxes, raise military spending and balance the budget without eliminating farm and business subsidies, and without cutting Social Security, Medicare, and military pensions by twenty five percent. He came to his position in the Reagan administration believing that it would be politically possible to make those cuts.
Reagan never learned, and left office in 1989 mystified that his administration saw the largest peacetime increase in the national debt in American history.
Stockman did learn. He ended his book writing:
“Those are the reasons we are spending 24 percent of GNP, compared by raising only 19 percent of GNP in taxes. They are also the reason why the White House and the Republican Party should not have told the American electorate in 1984 that we don’t have to raise taxes. It wasn’t true.”
In the following passages from his book Stockman reveals his condescending attitude about Reagan’s intelligence:
---------
Reagan had outsmarted us by speaking to the President in the language the President understood: the folksy Readers’ Digest anecdote.
---------
“I don’t want to hear any more talk about taxes,” he insisted. “The problem is deficit spending.”
It is difficult politely to correct the President of the United States when he has blatantly contradicted himself. The $800 billion worth of deficits were the result of the spending he didn’t want to cut.
---------
The president did not grasp the difference between constant dollars in current (inflated) dollars.
---------
Stockman still had a few things to learn himself. For example the stagflation that began in 1974 was not caused by Keynesian economic policies. It was caused by increases in the world price of petroleum that resulted from the OPEC Oil Embargo of 1973, and the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
Republicans have never liked Keynesian economic policies because they shifted wealth, power, and prestige from the business community to the government. Nevertheless, the Great Depression was not caused by a shortage of a natural resource that were essential to the U.S. economy. Also, during the Great Depression the problem was not inflation, but deflation.
Stockman also thinks that Republican economic policies are more conducive to economic growth than Democratic economic policies.
The United States Department of Commerce has a chart that shows fluctuations in the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) in 1996 dollars from 1920 to 2002.
http://www.singularity.com/charts/pag...
From 1921 to 2000 we had Republican presidents for forty years and Democrat presidents for forty years. The chart demonstrates that under Democrat presidents there was more economic growth in the per capita GDP than there was under Republican presidents. This is most obvious when we compare the Republican presidencies of Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover, with the Democratic presidents of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
For example, from 1921 to 1932 we had Republican presidents. During this time the per capita GDP declined from $5,758 to $4,901. We had the Democratic presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman from 1933 to 1952. During this time the per capita GDP increased from $4,904 to $11,980.
There were also more gains under other most Democratic presidents than Republican presidents.
There has usually been more job creation under Democratic presidents than Republican presidents. Under President Carter an average of 260,000 jobs were created every year. Under President Reagan this declined to 200,000 jobs per year. Under President Clinton this grew to 290,000 jobs per year.
https://www.democraticunderground.com...
According to a Nov 6, 2012 article in The Wall Street Journal, "Since 1900, the Dow has averaged a 7.8% annual gain under Democratic presidents, compared with a 3% annual gain under Republicans,”
http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2012/...
“The Triumph of Politics” shows how under the Reagan administration the national debt became the problem that now threatens the United States with economic disaster.
August 8, 2024
A SURPRISINGLY FRANK MEMOIR OF THE ECONOMICS OF THE "REAGAN REVOLUTION”
David Alan Stockman (born 1946) is best known as Director of the Office of Management and Budget during Reagan's first term. He wrote in the Prologue of this 1986 book, "My whole thesis had been that the social goals of the liberal establishment could only be achieved through a revival of non-inflationary economic growth. You needed a rising tide to lift all boats. That had been the basic objective of the Reagan Revolution." (Pg. 6-7)
He states frankly that Reagan "was a consensus politician, not an ideologue. He had no business trying to make a revolution because it wasn't in his bones... his conservative vision was only a vision... He had no concrete program... He embraced the Kemp-Roth tax cut because it seemed to be validated by an anecdote from his own personal history... he understood little of the blueprint's bone-jarring remainder." (Pg. 8-9)
He admits they projected "a high growth-low inflation consensus forecast on the basis of pure doctrine... Had the ideologues stuck with their purist forecast, the Reagan Revolution would not have been launched ... The staggering magnitude of domestic spending cuts necessary to balance the budget would have caused the White House politicians to lurch out of their slumber." (Pg. 94) By the end of 1981, "we were out of political muscle to cut domestic spending and the President was unwilling to change the tax and defense programs." (Pg. 340) He adds ruefully, "He had no choice but to repeal, or substantially dilute, the tax cut. That would have gone far... but in the end it proved too mean a test. In November 1981, Ronald Reagan chose not to be a leader but a politician..." (Pg. 342)
He admits that in 1983, "since no one in the White House wanted to propose the first triple-digit budget deficit in history ... I out-and-out cooked the books, inventing $15 billion per year of utterly phony cuts..." (Pg. 353) He observes that Reagan "had accepted, but never grasped, the political consequences of the revolution I had brought to him on the eve of his election. And now he had no idea of the fiscal failure I was leaving behind." (Pg. 354) He concludes, "Politics had triumphed: first by blocking spending cuts and then by stopping revenue increases. There was nothing left to do but... head out of town, whupped." (Pg. 376)
Stockman's candid memoir is an essential document for anyone interested in the Reagan era.
David Alan Stockman (born 1946) is best known as Director of the Office of Management and Budget during Reagan's first term. He wrote in the Prologue of this 1986 book, "My whole thesis had been that the social goals of the liberal establishment could only be achieved through a revival of non-inflationary economic growth. You needed a rising tide to lift all boats. That had been the basic objective of the Reagan Revolution." (Pg. 6-7)
He states frankly that Reagan "was a consensus politician, not an ideologue. He had no business trying to make a revolution because it wasn't in his bones... his conservative vision was only a vision... He had no concrete program... He embraced the Kemp-Roth tax cut because it seemed to be validated by an anecdote from his own personal history... he understood little of the blueprint's bone-jarring remainder." (Pg. 8-9)
He admits they projected "a high growth-low inflation consensus forecast on the basis of pure doctrine... Had the ideologues stuck with their purist forecast, the Reagan Revolution would not have been launched ... The staggering magnitude of domestic spending cuts necessary to balance the budget would have caused the White House politicians to lurch out of their slumber." (Pg. 94) By the end of 1981, "we were out of political muscle to cut domestic spending and the President was unwilling to change the tax and defense programs." (Pg. 340) He adds ruefully, "He had no choice but to repeal, or substantially dilute, the tax cut. That would have gone far... but in the end it proved too mean a test. In November 1981, Ronald Reagan chose not to be a leader but a politician..." (Pg. 342)
He admits that in 1983, "since no one in the White House wanted to propose the first triple-digit budget deficit in history ... I out-and-out cooked the books, inventing $15 billion per year of utterly phony cuts..." (Pg. 353) He observes that Reagan "had accepted, but never grasped, the political consequences of the revolution I had brought to him on the eve of his election. And now he had no idea of the fiscal failure I was leaving behind." (Pg. 354) He concludes, "Politics had triumphed: first by blocking spending cuts and then by stopping revenue increases. There was nothing left to do but... head out of town, whupped." (Pg. 376)
Stockman's candid memoir is an essential document for anyone interested in the Reagan era.
December 27, 2023
This book was a solid book. I’d give it 5 stars but it was a bit too long. I give Stockman credit for having the guys and clarity to write it. So many conservatives and supply sliders think lowering taxes is a silver bullet. Lowering taxes is just one lever that needs to be moved. Removing tax loopholes and creating a fair system that taxes business and corporations appropriately plus the rich is just as important. The middle class can pay. The lower class can pay too. The rich need to pay the most and not find ways around paying taxes because they can find the way. The real culprit is spending and both sides refuse to trim the welfare state and defense. The Reagan Revolution failed and now we are $39 trillion in debt because those politicians want their cake and to eat it too.
August 5, 2025
I read this book in my teens when Reagan was president. It is a great for those who want to know the inner workings of government. The key lesson is learn the value of the federal budget and its profound influence of everyday Americans. Any student who is planning to study political science or government should read this book.
November 21, 2019
The collision of naive idealism with political reality.
As relevant in exposing the fallacy of supply side tax theory as it is in describing our political reality. This should be read by all who will not read it.
As relevant in exposing the fallacy of supply side tax theory as it is in describing our political reality. This should be read by all who will not read it.
September 5, 2022
An insider’s informed introduction to the flawed logic behind Reagan’s absurd economic policies. But Stockman underplays Reagan’s political genius.
April 15, 2025
Link in the chain:
1971 Nixon shock -> deficit spending -> string of financial crises + bubbles (Black Monday 1987, 2008, 2019) -> massive debt -> gold-revaluation/de-dollarization/oil&yuan (here we are now) -> CBDC's and gold as a base for trade/commodities/currency (future?)
Deficit spending can be contained..... in theory (Keynes)
- in practice it becomes a shitshow (read this book)
- why balancing the budget in 2025 might fail under a "democratic" system that allows lobbying and local incentives to play out over the larger picture. Perhaps a Trump-style revision is needed?
Link: Gold-revaluation - de-dollarization - deficit spending - CBDCs
1971 Nixon shock -> deficit spending -> string of financial crises + bubbles (Black Monday 1987, 2008, 2019) -> massive debt -> gold-revaluation/de-dollarization/oil&yuan (here we are now) -> CBDC's and gold as a base for trade/commodities/currency (future?)
Deficit spending can be contained..... in theory (Keynes)
- in practice it becomes a shitshow (read this book)
- why balancing the budget in 2025 might fail under a "democratic" system that allows lobbying and local incentives to play out over the larger picture. Perhaps a Trump-style revision is needed?
Link: Gold-revaluation - de-dollarization - deficit spending - CBDCs
July 16, 2012
To read a summary of The Triumph of Politics is to think you're reading an argument for why you should skip it and find another book. It is, after all, about David Stockman-President Reagan's Budget Director-trying to cut spending in Washington and put together a budget. Literally, that's what it's about. Budgets, graphs, special interests competing--hardly riveting material. And yet what Stockman found when he was plucked out the House of Representatives to work in the Reagan administration was startling. Even his political and ideological allies had only a tenuous belief in the kind of cutting he wanted to do which was to actually cut spending to accomodate a thirty percent across the board income tax reduction. It shouldn't be compelling, but dammit, it makes for a lucid, fanatastic read fueled as much by its behind the scenes accounts as its tell all gossip and Stockman's unwavering arrogance. In his eyes, the Democrats were shameless economically illiterate panderers and liars and the Republicans weren't too pure of conviction either.
Essentially, there were two types of Republicans among the conservatives in the Reagan Revolution years: Jack Kemp supply-siders who had almost no interest in trimming spending or cutting down the scope of the leviathan and a nearly religious belief in the power of tax cuts to solve everything (Kemp dismissed serious budget-cutting proposals as "root canal politics") and more libertarian minded types like Stockman who for ideological reasons wanted to slash the state. Those conservative Republicans had to deal with a very tangible bloc of North Eastern moderates (called the Gypsy Moths) and mainstream big-state, big spenders who were more business class than ideological. And then there were the conservative Boll Weevil Democrats from the South aligned with Reagan who had little interest in the across the board tax cut and much more in their own ideas (cutting the estate and capital gains taxes) and faking like they wanted to cut spending too. Reaching agreement with themselves let alone bringing along the Democrats is a nightmare and Stockman captures how much of a game it all was. For all that everyone screamed about trimming the federal government, everyone had a program they believed sacrosanct and maybe even should be increased. He also reveals that Ronald Reagan, for all the strength of his belief, barely understood what he was advocating. In fact, few besides Stockman understood that their projections were too sanguine and that huge deficits and soaring inflation could explode if the unaffordable tax cuts weren't scaled back. He had to fight everyone from the tax cut extremists in his own party and the military wing to the welfare statists in the other party (his boldest idea to cut Social Security spending blows up in his face). When he could no longer keep pushing for policies that he knew were harmful he resigned. You can fault David A. Stockman for his youthful arrogance, you can find him horribly unfair to the Democrats and his ideological adversaries, but The Triumph of Politics is hard to put down and in his ultimate resignation we see a lesson that more politicians should heed.
Essentially, there were two types of Republicans among the conservatives in the Reagan Revolution years: Jack Kemp supply-siders who had almost no interest in trimming spending or cutting down the scope of the leviathan and a nearly religious belief in the power of tax cuts to solve everything (Kemp dismissed serious budget-cutting proposals as "root canal politics") and more libertarian minded types like Stockman who for ideological reasons wanted to slash the state. Those conservative Republicans had to deal with a very tangible bloc of North Eastern moderates (called the Gypsy Moths) and mainstream big-state, big spenders who were more business class than ideological. And then there were the conservative Boll Weevil Democrats from the South aligned with Reagan who had little interest in the across the board tax cut and much more in their own ideas (cutting the estate and capital gains taxes) and faking like they wanted to cut spending too. Reaching agreement with themselves let alone bringing along the Democrats is a nightmare and Stockman captures how much of a game it all was. For all that everyone screamed about trimming the federal government, everyone had a program they believed sacrosanct and maybe even should be increased. He also reveals that Ronald Reagan, for all the strength of his belief, barely understood what he was advocating. In fact, few besides Stockman understood that their projections were too sanguine and that huge deficits and soaring inflation could explode if the unaffordable tax cuts weren't scaled back. He had to fight everyone from the tax cut extremists in his own party and the military wing to the welfare statists in the other party (his boldest idea to cut Social Security spending blows up in his face). When he could no longer keep pushing for policies that he knew were harmful he resigned. You can fault David A. Stockman for his youthful arrogance, you can find him horribly unfair to the Democrats and his ideological adversaries, but The Triumph of Politics is hard to put down and in his ultimate resignation we see a lesson that more politicians should heed.
January 24, 2011
Independientemente de los planteamientos políticos y económicos del autor y de aquéllos a quien sirvió, el libro es muy interesante.
Nos cuenta los errores de cálculo, los choques frontales, las manipulaciones secretas y los contubernios que condujeron al fracaso de la Revolución reaganiana, que produjo un déficit apabullante de un billón de dólares en vez del presupuesto equilibrado que el presidente había prometido al electorado...
Incluso los miembros del Congreso favorables a la reducción del gasto empezaron a desertar cuando las medidas propuestas chocaron con las enérgicas demandas de su propio electorado... sus teorías, tan convincentes sobre el papel, se fundaban en un profundo error de valoración en cuanto al funcionamiento del sistema político de su país... lo que ocurre cuando un ideólogo radical, apoyado por los poderes de la presidencia, se lanza a un mundillo de rivalidades personales y de intereses creados, ignorando la tradición nacional estadounidense y la componenda.
Ver http://www.elpais.com/articulo/ultima...
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/econom...
Nos cuenta los errores de cálculo, los choques frontales, las manipulaciones secretas y los contubernios que condujeron al fracaso de la Revolución reaganiana, que produjo un déficit apabullante de un billón de dólares en vez del presupuesto equilibrado que el presidente había prometido al electorado...
Incluso los miembros del Congreso favorables a la reducción del gasto empezaron a desertar cuando las medidas propuestas chocaron con las enérgicas demandas de su propio electorado... sus teorías, tan convincentes sobre el papel, se fundaban en un profundo error de valoración en cuanto al funcionamiento del sistema político de su país... lo que ocurre cuando un ideólogo radical, apoyado por los poderes de la presidencia, se lanza a un mundillo de rivalidades personales y de intereses creados, ignorando la tradición nacional estadounidense y la componenda.
Ver http://www.elpais.com/articulo/ultima...
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/econom...
May 21, 2016
We know history. And history is wrong about the Reagan Administration. History says Reagan slashed welfare and aid to pay for tax cuts. That is only half true. Nothing was cut under Reagan. As Stockman points out, many programs despised by the GOP actually grew under Reagan.
No matter how redundant or ineffective, or how much money they wasted, all government programs were supported by some Republicans in the Congress.
Six of eight years of Reagan's administration had a GOP Senate and the House was under Democratic control all eight. Perhaps if Reagan had a GOP Congress he would've supported cutting the budget. I doubt that. His aides, sans Stockman, were true believers and convinced Reagan cuts were unnecessary. The first trillion dollars mark on US debt happened under Reagan. We are now at $19 trillion. We have had GOP presidents and Congresses since then. None cut spending. They all wanted the easy road to reelection and that was spending tax payers' money to buy votes. It still is happening in 2016, and I'm sure the current politicians know they'll be long retired when the house of cards comes crashing down
No matter how redundant or ineffective, or how much money they wasted, all government programs were supported by some Republicans in the Congress.
Six of eight years of Reagan's administration had a GOP Senate and the House was under Democratic control all eight. Perhaps if Reagan had a GOP Congress he would've supported cutting the budget. I doubt that. His aides, sans Stockman, were true believers and convinced Reagan cuts were unnecessary. The first trillion dollars mark on US debt happened under Reagan. We are now at $19 trillion. We have had GOP presidents and Congresses since then. None cut spending. They all wanted the easy road to reelection and that was spending tax payers' money to buy votes. It still is happening in 2016, and I'm sure the current politicians know they'll be long retired when the house of cards comes crashing down
April 2, 2020
In January 1984, after being lectured to inanely by Reagan and concluding that he "could not bear to watch this good and decent man go on in this embarrassing way," that he "couldn't defend a planned trillion-dollar deficit," a "budget ... so bad, it's beyond the pale," David Stockman decided to tell his boss Jim Baker that he'd soon be resigning, to which Baker
came back at me with a voice [that] was ice-cold:
"You do that and you'll stab the President right in the back. The Democrats will have a field day in the 1984 campaign. Let me remind you of something, my friend. He stuck by you. Now you stick by him. You've made as many mistakes as the rest of us around here. So stick that unwarranted pride of yours right up your ass, and get back in the trenches with the rest of us." (407)
June 4, 2016
David Stockman, Reagan’s Budget Director, was a NeoCon leader and a devout believer in that oxymoron, a conservative revolution. No one believed more in what economics major, George H. W. Bush famously labeled voodoo economics than Stockman. That the Laffer Curve was just a doodle on a napkin, not even backed by a real economic theory, let alone supported by any study didn’t dissuade him. That Supply Side Economics was the very thing that conservative hero, Adam Smith, had disproved in The Wealth of Nations never occurred to him. This book rather tediously recounts how the Reagan administration veered away from pure voodoo, a situation that Stockman attributes to politics. It wasn’t that good when it was written and it is hasn’t aged well.
July 4, 2016
This is a must-read for any serious student of the Reagan era, and a great addition to such a student's personal library. The irony is that this book was in my personal collection many years ago, and I gave it away. Not only that, I was only able to get through half of it before it totally bogged down for me in minutia. The problem was that this was the first book I attempted to read on the whole Reaganomics phenomenon, and it was simply information overload. So read this book, but not unless you have some idea of the economic theory and major players involved before you dive in head first.
August 30, 2013
Just started reading (page 67 out of 394) but it is entertaining reading by David Stockman, Reagan's Director of the Office of Management and Budget, who with Jack Kemp and Arthur Laffer (remember the Laffer curve written on a napkin?) created the supply side emphasis of the Reagan administration. From the beginning he implies that Reagan was basically a likeable guy but an empty suit who had to be educated intensely to understand Stockman's ideas and ultimately abandoned the total concept because politics (both Republican and Democrat) made it impossible to implment.
maybe-read-sometime
December 1, 2008This was in the free books bin ... the guy is clearly clever, but honestly, I don't know enough about the hidden dynamics of the Reagan administration to gauge the veracity of his account. (And I'm not sure that I want to.)
He mentions having written a paper tracing conservative philosophers back to early liberal thinkers ... which intrigues me, because I've always felt a sense of interconnection there that I haven't been able to articulate.
He mentions having written a paper tracing conservative philosophers back to early liberal thinkers ... which intrigues me, because I've always felt a sense of interconnection there that I haven't been able to articulate.
April 30, 2012
This book should be on the reading list of everyone really interested in politics, either in the 80s or now. Stockman really takes us through how the ideologues just pulled the numbers out of the air and their decisions exploded the deficit in the 80s. I had never realized that even as late as the early 80s (and maybe now) how the conservative movement fundamentally wanted to undo the reforms of the 1930s and 1960s.
February 16, 2009
There are a lot of things to find captivating about this book. What strikes me most of all is that the "Reagan Revolution" was a total bust from the start and that these are still some of the same arguments we're having today. I think everybody interested in politics needs to revisit this book ASAP.
April 3, 2015
While this book had its boring and difficult to understand sections, it proved to be an informative read. The author was both brutally honest and earnest in mapping out his own and Ronald Reagan's failure to implement the economic and fiscal policies promised by his campaign.
May 18, 2007
Excellent. Written by Reagan's OMB director and one of the guys who came up with supply side economics.
February 11, 2014
I like this one better than his new one. It's had a better combination of narrative but also concise points.
March 3, 2016
Turned me into cynic. Reading this proves our legislators are in it for themselves.
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