Loose Lips and Their Legacy

IN ADDITION to his considerable talents as a budget-cutter, David Stockman seems to have a gift for metaphor as well. By calling Ronald Reagan's supply-side economics program a "Trojan Horse" for the age-old trickle-down theory, he neatly captured its essential dishonesty and unworkability. But since Stockman also happened to be one of the chief purveyors of that program, the metaphor, however elegant, was bound to land him in a heap of trouble. Trouble came last week, in the form of a firm scolding by the president: the 34-year-old director of OMB barely escaped with his job. After the meeting, Stockman again displayed his flair for imagery: it had been a "trip to the woodshed after supper." One can almost picture Ronald Reagan saying "this hurts me a lot more than it hurts you" as he administered a hiding to his favorite son.

Stockman's extraordinary admissions to William Greider of the Washington Post--that he had grave doubts about the administration's economic program even as he was publicly advocating it--hurts both Stockman and the President a great deal. And they came at a particularly inopportune time for this suddenly floundering presidency. There has been vicious infighting between Secretary of State Alexander Haig and National Security Advisor Richard Allen. Haig and Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger Jr. '38 can't agree on whether or not NATO plans include a nuclear "warning shot" at the Soviet Union. And the president himself appears to be ignorant about major issues when confront sans note cards at press conferences.

But these other problems pale by comparison to the damage done by Stockman's revelations. By saying that "supply siders have gone too far...they created this nonpolitical view of the economy, where you are going to have big changes and abrupt turns, and their happy vision of this world of growth and no inflation and no pain." Stockman agreed with those critics who have contended all along that Reagan's program for huge defense outlays coupled with tax cuts and social service reductions is a prescription for budget deficits and inequity. Stockman has thus punched a gaping hole in his credibility and that of the other major White House economic spokesmen and effectively destroyed the administration's hard-won political momentum. In other words, the Democrats have been handed a political gift beyond their wildest hopes and dreams.

The impact of David Stockman's confessions may even go beyond the political damage to Ronald Reagan. A close reading of Stockman's remarks reveals what the most cynical political observers have always maintained: that political expediency, not theory or fair-minded, judgment, dictates the shaping of economic policy. Stockman painted a lurid picture of unprincipled compromise, pork-barrel greed, and cowardice in the face of interest group pressure. As he neatly summed it up. Washington is a place where it doesn't make too much sense to "believe in the momentum theory...I believe in institutional inertia. Two months of response can't beat fifteen years of political infrastructure. I'm talking about K Street and all of the interest groups in this town, the community of interest groups. We sort of stunned it, but it just went underground for the winter. It will be back..."In short. The Education of David Stockman consisted of the growing realization that when political leaders start tinkering with the economy, the public has little reason to take them seriously. And that admission damages all politicians terribly, be they liberal or conservative.

WHETHER AS AN ANTI-WAR ORGANIZER or as a disciple of neo-conservative professors, David Stockman has been an idealist. He has faithfully maintained that there is acoherent set of rules by which the world can and should work. So when he arrived in Washington, full clear hopes and plans for restoring "fiscal control", his frustration was inevitable. A capacity for frustrated idealism rarely lead, to lasting success in Washington. But there is a double sense in which we should be grate ful that Stockman had that capacity. For one thing, idealistic public officials appear infrequently enough to learn our respect regardless of their political viewpoint. But more importantly, Stockman's frustration contributed to his candor; in his case disillusionment was like a truth serum. And that candor, as Senator Robert Dole (R-Kan) noted, was refreshing, particularly so for what it revealed about the legislative process.

Stockman's idealism, however, was limited, and for that he merits no gratitude. For David Stockman only has ideals about management, about how to make the machine called government run the way it should. His is a purely technical vision. he has never had any conception of the day-to-day impact of his policies on people--on their jobs, their budgets, their emotions. Operating at such a level of abstraction--viewing himself solely as a mechanic--Stockman could swallow his doubts about the equity and efficacy of the Reagan plan and press on in search of the right set of numbers. He simply played an intellectual game with the economy, and hence with millions of people's lives.

The results of that game--eight percent unemployment, a squeeze on state and local governments, high interest rates--are just now beginning to hit home. Stockman's remarks may have embarassed himself and the president: in that sense, they mark a turning point in the history of an administration. But to the people who have to live with what he's done, Stockman's mea culpas sound as if he's merely trying to rub it in. In that sense, they may well mark a turning point in the way the public perceives not only Ronald Reagan, but politics and politicians as a whole.