Back in 1981 the Reagan administration promised big tax cuts for the rich; higher defense spending; no spending cuts in programs that were really useful but only in rent-seeking waste, fraud, and abuse; and a balanced budget. They didn't add up. They went forward anyway.

a decade of slow growth if a weak-dollar policy aimed at balanced trade and the financing requirements of the federal government starved private investment. a decade of the destruction of American midwestern manufacturing as the capital inflow to finance investment was in its turn financed by the eagerness generated by a strong-dollar policy to purchase from abroad.

The Reagan administration chose (2)--which was bad, although better than (1) for the country as a whole. The Reagan Democrats of McComb County got what they deserved. And a lot of other Americans got what they did not deserve.

My late friend Susan Rasky--who was covering the budget for the New York Times that year--blamed the press corps of which she was a part for allowing itself to report the fake news that the situation was confused, and that the Reagan administration did have a plan to juggle the situation--big tax cuts for the rich; higher defense spending; no spending cuts in programs that were really useful but only in rent-seeking waste, fraud, and abuse; and a balanced budget--because Reagan budget director David Stockman was a wizard. And she always put a large part of the blame for the press corps' institutional failure on then-Washington Post editor William Greider.

In her estimation, Greider guided his reporters away from the real story in order to preserve his own forthcoming scoop of reporting it in the Atlantic profile of David Stockman he was going to publish after the budget fight was over. And she found herself unable to get her own editors to back her as fully as she wanted them to--for they asked: "If you are right about this, why is the Washington Post reporting things differently?"

The Republican senate majority leader back in 1981, Howard Baker, characterized the Reagan administration's plans as "a riverboat gamble". That was not a compliment. He was waiting to see whether outside pressure from the public sphere might force the Reagan administration to reconsider, but without that pressure he was not brave enough to do anything other than shut up and soldier.

Similarly, back in 2001 neither Paul O'Neill nor Alan Greenspan was brave enough to say that the Bush tax cuts should be conditional on the continued existence of a budget surplus to pay for them.

Today's Republicans are unlikely to do any better than their predecessors--Greenspan, O'Neill, Baker. And is today's press corps?

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