A Naked Administration

Some will grouse about former budget director David A. Stockman’s failing to wait a respectful interval before writing a kiss-and-tell book about the Reagan Administration. But Stockman grouses about himself enough to make up for that.

Others will giggle over Stockman’s characterization of his former colleagues in the forthcoming book, “The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed.” There will be academic arguments over the President’s own grasp of economics.

And those looking for hard-core titillation already are disappointed. But it would be unfortunate if the book were written off as mere peevishness by Stockman or a rush to cash in on his association with the President while the cashing is good. There are some lessons here for future administrations. There is still even time for this Administration to benefit.

The lesson is not the validity of supply-side economics, or whether the President understands economics. The real lesson is that the Administration plunged into governing without adequate preparation, that it accepted flawed assumptions without challenge and enough people asking enough questions, and that it had a vision of where it wanted to go but no sound plan for getting there.

This scenario runs counter to the perception that the Reagan Administration projected up to and through the 1981 Inaugural. Never before had any incoming administration prepared itself so well, the American people were told. Never had an administration been so well equipped to manage the government or so certain of what it wanted to do. After all, the top Reagan team began planning the assumption of power well before the election, and had all the management prowess of private enterprise at its disposal.

In reality, Stockman relates, the Administration really was not ready to govern. It steamed into office on political rhetoric and a concern for looking good on television, but not much else. It bowled over Congress in getting the easy part of the Reagan Revolution, the tax cuts, but lacked the will to balance it with the difficult part, the budget cuts. The result was massive budget deficits that persist today.

The emperor, it seems, was not the only one to have no clothes.

Perhaps the most troublesome question raised by Stockman’s book is this: Has anything changed in five years? The answer is, very little, except that there are no David Stockmans left with the temerity to say anything about it.