A Broken Stock Market and Broken Trust

 The headline read:

“Selling Swamps Exchange

Leading Issues Tumble

As Wall Street Assails

The New Tariff”

This is not from yesterday; it is from the front page of The New York Times dated June 17, 1930. The day before President Hoover announced he would sign the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill and stocks responded with an 8% decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Responding to President Trump’s tariff announcement the S&P 500 declined by 9% last week, wiping out $6 trillion in market value. Simply put, just as in 1930, high tariffs are poison for the global economy. And to add insult to injury, the Trump tariffs are higher than Smoot Hawley.

My sense is that the decline in stock prices is not over. In the week leading up the October 19th,1987 20+% crash in stock prices, the S&P 500 witnessed a similar 9% decline. As we wrote last month, we believe that the recession of 2025 has now begun. ( See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-recession-of-2025.html) In response to the tariff announcement and the wealth destruction that it caused, consumption and investment are freezing up and as a result of the DOGE cuts, government spending is heading lower. The recession is baked in the cake.

Adding to the unease is that in less than three months the Trump Administration has broken the trust in America with respect to our military alliances and our reliability as a trading partner. What has taken decades to build up has been destroyed in a few months. Further, even if Trump tries to repair the damage, his administration is staffed by D and F players who are incapable of playing on the global stage. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, trade advisor Peter Navarro and Economic Council Director Kevin Hastett hardly inspire confidence. 

Although Scott Bessent is potentially a B or an A player, he was, according to Bloomberg News, not in the room when the tariff schedule was decided upon. Indeed, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has proved himself to be so much of a Trump sycophant that would be incapable of healing the breach with our allies and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is clueless.

This is a far cry from the team Nixon had when he broke the dollar’s link to gold and devalued it. Nixon had Secretary of State William Rogers and Secretary of the Treasury John Connally, neither of whom were A players. In the background, however, were National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and Under Secretary for Monetary Affairs Paul Volcker. ( See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2021/07/my-amazon-review-of-jeffrey-gartens.html) During the 1987 stock market crash Ronald Reagan was guided by the expert advice of George Schultz and James Baker, both consummate A players. Thirty years later George W. Bush had the steadying hand of Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson during the financial crisis of 2008 and Obama benefitted from the advice of Tim Geithner his treasury secretary.

As a result. It is hard to see how we are going to get out of this mess with minimum damage. The easier way would be for Trump to take that advice of former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. He tweeted the other day:

Lloyd Blankfein

@lloydblankfein

“The switchboard at the WH must be burning up with gov’ts trying to surrender in this trade war. Why not give them a chance? Make the 10pct min tariff immediate but defer the “reciprocal” part 6 mos. Take the win! The Prez said he’d make us tired of winning…I’m there “

That would certainly give the markets some breathing space. The much harder way is for the Republicans in Congress to become so fearful of the midterm elections that they break with him on the tariff issue. To get there will require a lot of carnage in the markets. Similarly, a court action to declare Trump’s actions illegal will take time.

Finally, we have to remember that the Trump Administration needs the revenue from the tariffs to fund its tax cuts and to protect American industry.  A 10% tariff would raise $300 billion/year and a 20% tariff $600 billion/year. Tariffs aren’t going away. So, my guess is that when the markets open tomorrow, it won’t be pretty.

My Review of William Inboden's "The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War......"

 Reagan v. Evil Empire

 

On March 8, 1983, President Ronald Reagan spoke before an evangelical conference where he called out the Soviet Union as “the focus of evil in the modern world.” This became known as his evil empire speech. Although he was roundly criticized for his choice of words, Reagan was dead right. University of Texas professor and former national security aide to George W. Bush, William Imboden rightly focuses on the ideological content of Reagan’s foreign policy which became known as the Reagan Doctrine in his deeply researched history.

Although known as a super-hawk during his career, Reagan’s goal was to seek peace through a negotiated surrender of the Soviet Union. In this task he succeeded and along the way he liberated Eastern Europe and started the process of reducing the huge stocks of nuclear weapon controlled by the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

Reagan’s policy was that of peace through strength. He orchestrated a huge arms build-up and started the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) which scared the living daylights out of the Soviet Union. Listening more to Andrew Marshall Office of Net Assessment in the bowels of the Pentagon than the CIA, he understood that the Soviet economy was far weaker than previously thought. (Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Andrew Krepinevich's and Barry Watts' "The Last Warrior: Andrew Marshall and the Shaping of Modern American Defense Strategy") Simply put, the Soviets couldn’t keep up.

Inboden covers the shaky start of the administration where both his national security advisor and Secretary of State were fired. While looking to meet with the Soviets, three of their leaders died on him, Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko. But once Gorbachev came into power the way was open for both of them to achieve Reagan’s longstanding goal of reducing nuclear weapons. Reagan was aided by having A-players in his administration. These would include William Clark, George Schultz, James Baker, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Paul Nitze, Colin Powell, and George H.W. Bush. It is sad that today A-players in today’s Washington, D.C. are few and far between.

Reagan really did care about human rights. He consistently supported the rights of Jews in the Soviet Union to emigrate. He worked hard to end the dictatorships in Chile, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Korea. He learned the lesson from Iran and Nicaragua, that right wing dictatorships despite being allied to the U.S., were brittle. Hence, he supported the transition to democracy among many of our allies.

Throughout his administration Reagan had the support of Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl and especially of Yasuhiro Nakasone of Japan. He viewed Japan as our most strategic ally. He also received advice from Richard Nixon, mostly good, some bad; and Russia expert Suzanne Massie who came up with the “trust but verify” policy.

Inboden does not sugar coat the Iran/Contra scandal that nearly brought down his administration. How these presumably smart people got sucked into doing an arms for hostages deal with Iran and then using some of the proceeds to illegally fund the Nicaraguan Contras. You couldn’t make up the comedy of errors involved in this fiasco.

 

Inboden’s history of Reagan’s foreign policy sheds new light on this one of our most consequential presidents. It is well worth the read.

My Review of James Graham Wilson's "America's Cold Warrior: Paul Nitze and National Security from Roosevelt to Reagan"

A Man of Action

 

Where is Paul Nitze when we need him? Paul Nitze engaged in national security policy for every president from Roosevelt to Reagan. The lesson he learned from Pearl Harbor carried through his entire career and that was in order to defend the United States, the United States had to be stronger than any potential aggressor. His policy was the essence of peace through strength.

 

James Wilson’s biography fully discusses Nitze’s professional career from being an investment banker in the 1930’s to being a tribune in the highest councils of government on national security affairs.  Nitze modeled himself on what he called “men of action.” They included his first boss Clarence Dillon, Navy Secretary James Forrestal, Secretary of State Dean Acheson and presidents Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan. While working for Clarence Dillon at the Dillon Reed banking firm Nitze was involved in putting together the Cal-Tex agreement which sent middle eastern oil to Asia and the financing of the Triboro Bridge.

 

As war clouds loomed in 1940 Nitze followed his mentor at Dillon Reed, James Forestal into government. He could well afford to work in government because of his wife’s wealth and his own personal investments. During World War II he worked on the strategic bombing survey and after the war he found himself at the State Department working under George Kennan. In 1950 he succeeded Kennan as the Director of Policy Planning. There he authored the now famous NSC-68 memorandum which called for a massive defense build-up wrapped in American values. The build-up would come with the onset of the Korean War a few months later.

 

In the mid-1950’s he would switch parties and became a Democrat because of his disagreement over Eisenhour’s massive retaliation strategy and his thinking was very influential in the Kennedy campaign of 1960. Nitze was in the room when during the height of the Cuban missile crisis. Nitze thought Kennedy’s policy only worked because the U.S. had superior forces relative to the Soviet Union. That advantage would erode away in the 1960’s and turn into a severe disadvantage in the 1970’s. Though now a Democrat, Nitze participated in arms control negotiations under Nixon. He was respected by hawks across the aisle.

 

When not in government during the Nixon-Ford era he found a home at the Johns-Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, which is now named after him. His interns there included Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz who would soon become real players in the Reagan Administration and beyond. His contribution to the arms debate in the 1970’s was his leading role in the Committee on the Present Danger which anteceded the Reagan military build-up of the 1980’s.

 

Reagan hired him as an arm control negotiator and in 1982 he had his famous walk in the woods with his Soviet counterpart, Kvitsinsky. Although nothing came of it at the time, it was a percussor of all of the arms control agreements that would follow. In the 1980’s Nitze was far too suspicious of Gorbachev and overestimated Soviet strength. He didn’t realize how much the Soviets feared Reagan. ( See: Shulmaven: My Review* of Sergey Radchenko's "To Run the World: The Kremlin's Bd.........." )Nitze wasn’t perfect, but he got most of the big things dead right. Further his brittle personality kept him from being either Secretary of Defense or Secretary of State, although he served admirably in both departments. Wilson has done us a real service in writing Nitze’s biography at this time. We surely need someone like him today. 

My Amazon Review of Matthew Continetti's : The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism"

 

Triumph and Tragedy

 

As I write this Liz Cheney, the scion of Reagan Republicanism and what used to be the heartbeat of American conservatism, lost her primary battle to a Trump acolyte in Wyoming. Simply out, the Republican Party is no longer a conservative party, but rather a cult of personality populist party. This is the end point of Matthew Continetti’s hundred-year history of American conservatism. Continetti, now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, has been a writer/activist on the conservative scene for two decades and is the son-in-law of William Kristol, a leading neoconservative and one of the foremost anti-Trumpers on the Right.

 

Continetti begins his history in the 1920’s when the conservative Republican Party stood for protectionism, anti-immigration and more or less and isolationist foreign policy. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it. However, there is a major difference from today that Continetti doesn’t mention. That is in the 1920’s conservatives were an optimistic bunch believing in the new technologies of automobiles, electrification, radio, aircraft, and talking pictures that was underpinning an economic boom. Thus, when the Great Depression came, it was truly a shock turning optimism into pessimism about the future of the country under the New Deal.  

 

As a result, conservatives stayed in the political wilderness for years as the Democratic Party and liberal Republicans dominated the scene. However, beneath the surface a disparate group of conservatives rallied around anticommunism and the leadership of William Buckley and his National Review. Elitist to the core Buckley and crew became the backbone of conservative revival, but beneath the surface their remained vestiges of racism, antisemitism, and authoritarianism. Those would resurface many years later.

 

When liberalism cracked up under the strains of the Vietnam War and the stagflation of the 1970’s, conservatives were ready to seize the mantle of power. Instead of the dour conservatism of say, 1940’s Bob Taft, conservatives were led by the sunny optimism of Ronald Reagan who offered economic growth at home and the defeat of communism abroad. Reagan united social, economic, and foreign policy conservatives under one banner. However, the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and with that the unity of the conservative movement fell.

 

In fact, one year later, in a forerunner to Trump, Pat Buchanan mounted a populist challenge to President George H.W. Bush and soon Ruch Limbaugh would dominate the airwaves of talk radio.  For a time, the conservative establishment held these forces in check, but failures in the Iraq War and the Great Financial Crisis destroyed its legitimacy. All the while a populist revolt was brewing against trade, immigration, and foreign wars that Continetti and his intellectual buddies in the think tanks and K-Street were oblivious to. They were too busy talking to each other rather than going out into the country to visit the dive bars and fast-food joints of the Midwest and the South. They soon would have discovered that there was a revolt brewing against the know-it-all coastal elites of both parties who in the words of Hillary Clinton, called them “deplorables.”  I hate to break it to Continetti, but all too many conservatives felt the same way.

 

Continetti’s goal is to blend historical conservatism to the new populism. My guess is that train has passed the station, at least for now. When CPAC features Hungarian autocrat Victor Orban as a speaker, you know the world has changed. Thus, it looks like that conservatives will once again be spending long years in the wilderness. If it is to recover it will have to come with an optimistic vision similar to what happened in the 1920’s and the 1980’s.

For the full Amazon URL see: Triumph and Tragedy (amazon.com)

 

My Amazon Review of Peter Baker's and Susan Glasser's "The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III"

 

The Realist

 

Husband and wife journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser have written tour de force biography Jim Baker who was perhaps the most consequential appointed politician of the past five decades. Baker was consequential because he understood the role of politics is to govern and Baker sure knew how to use the instruments of power to successfully govern in support of Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

 

Baker and Glasser spent eight years on the project and they had the full cooperation of Baker. They not only discuss Baker’s public life, but we get a real sense of his private life as well. The authors had access to Baker’s lover letters to his first wife who bore him four children and died way too young of cancer. We then see Baker marrying one of his wife’s friends who brings three children to the marriage. It truly was a Brady bunch with an eighth child thrown in later. Baker was a devoted husband, but his children suffered from a myriad of problems involving drugs which were not helped by Baker’s absence caused by his very public life.

 

Jim Baker is scion of the Houston establishment. Until his late 30’s he had no interest in politics while he was building a very successful law practice. He enters politics through his tennis buddy, George H.W. Bush who was elected as a congressman from Houston. They essentially become brothers along with the sibling rivalry that entails. As Bush rises in Washington, so too does Baker. So much so that Baker runs Ford’s 1976 campaign for president and he then runs Bush’s primary campaign in 1980. After Reagan’s nomination Baker becomes a key figure in Reagan’s campaign that leads him to becoming his chief of staff.

 

It is generally recognized that Baker set the gold standard for White House chiefs of staff. While working for Reagan he controls the various factions within the White House and puts together a congressional coalition to pass Reagan’s economic package through Congress in 1981. He also keeps a lid on an effort to militarily intervene in Nicaragua during the first term. His absence in Reagan’s second term opened the way to the Iran-Contra scandal that almost brought down the Reagan presidency. His one black mark as chief of staff was his attempted bullying of Fed Chairman Paul Volcker.

 

In 1984 Baker runs Reagan’s successful “Morning in America” reelection campaign and he then moves on to become Secretary of the Treasury. As treasury secretary he pushes through Reagan’s monumental 1986 tax reform act. The authors ignore the key role that Houston’s Rice University economist on leave to the treasury Charles McLure had in fashioning the underlying framework for the new tax law.

 

Baker also was the architect of the 1985 Plaza Accord that orchestrated a global policy to devalue the dollar. That was done without Volcker, a mistake in my opinion. The authors ignore two key side effects of the accord. First it created a sea of global liquidity that created the Japan stock bubble and led to a flood of money into the global real estate market. Both Japanese stocks and global real estate would crash in 1990. Second the weaker dollar led to a temporary renaissance in Midwest manufacturing which would become of great help to H.W. Bush’s election in 1988. Baker then resigned as Treasury Secretary and ran Bush’s presidential campaign.

 

In 1989 Baker becomes Secretary of State where he orchestrates a successful end of the Cold War and German reunification. We also see Baker hiring Democrats on his staff including Dennis Ross. Along the way makes friends with Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze. While dealing with German reunification issues Iraq invaded Kuwait triggering the first Gulf War. Baker organizes an international coalition and gets Russia to go along and China to abstain at a critical U.N. meeting. With the Gulf War over Baker tried to broker a peace between Israel and the Palestinians. This led to the Madrid Conference of 1992 which ultimately paved the way to the 1993 Rabin-Arafat meeting in 1993. To me his strong arming of Israel was a bit much, but it did get results.

 

With the 1992 Bush campaign in disarray Baker returns to the White House. His efforts were to no avail as Bush lost to Clinton. He then goes back to private life where he spends much time working for private equity giant Carlyle Group relaxing at his primitive Wyoming ranch.

 

With the Florida recount jeopardizing the 2000 election of George W. Bush, Baker is called back into action to aid the Bush family. He organizes the Bush efforts and puts together an all-star legal pick up team consisting of now Senator Ted Cruz, now Chief Justice John Roberts and now Justice Brett Kavanaugh. They win in the Supreme Court with Republican super-lawyer Ted Olson arguing the case.

 

After that Baker returns to private life, but he still finds the time to co-head an Iraq study commission in 2007. He his now 90 and Baker and Glasser shine a light on his personality and his service to our country.

For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R3NOZ2CCBLTG9M/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Rick Pearlstein's "Reaganland: America Turns Right, 1976-1980"

 

Reagan Ascendant

 

Rick Pearlstein, a man of the Left, has written a very long (1120 pages in the print edition) and very important history of American politics from 1976-1980 through the twin lenses of the flowering of the American Right and Reagan’s successful campaign for the presidency. This is his fourth volume on the history of the modern American Right that starts in the 1950’s. (See my earlier review of his “The Invisible Bridge…” https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2014/08/my-amazon-review-of-rick-pearlsteins.html) As with his prior volumes he is very good at discussing the day-to-day politics of the era. The liberals were literally out of gas and there was a thunder on the Right led by the evangelical community, the revival of business lobbying and the new ideas coming from the neoconservatives. Standing athwart all of this was the hapless Jimmy Carter who found a way to upset the liberals on his left and the moderates on his right which leads to a challenge by Senator Edward Kennedy.

 

Pearlstein delivers terrific portraits of John Connally, Nixon’s Treasury Secretary and presumed Republican front runner in 1979, and anti-Equal Rights Amendment firebrand Phyllis Schlafly who successfully organizes the Right to defeat the amendment. We see the young Paul Manafort and Roger Stone practicing their dark arts that would become the basis of a powerful political consulting firm in the 1980s whose lives would turn into ignominy with the election of Donald Trump. We also see the rise of the direct mail wizard Richard Vigueri and his cohorts on the Right, Howard Phillips and Paul Weyrich.

 

The religious Right draws its strength from its opposition to abortion and gay rights. In its opposition to abortion American Protestants linkup with Catholics for the first time to form a powerful urban-rural coalition which undermines Democratic dominance of the eastern and Midwestern urban centers. In their opposition to gay rights, the Right finds a spokesperson in singer Anita Bryant who leads the charge to repeal a Miami gay rights ordinance.

 

Through it all we see Ronald Reagan methodically plodding along his path to the presidency with the ups and downs of his campaign culminating with his debate win over Jimmy Carter. To be sure he fires his first campaign manager, the egotistical John Sears and there are many gaffes along the way, but Reagan is opportunistic enough make a major issue out of the Panama Canal Treaty as sign of American retreat. Of course he and the Republican Party is helped along when everything falls off the tracks in 1979. We have the Iranian Revolution, the tripling of the price of gasoline, gas lines, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident and the Iranian hostage crisis.

 

What Pearlstein misses is the sociological earthquake that was happening the 1970’s that gave rise to the religious Right. For example the birthrate collapsed from a peak of 4.3 million births in 1957 to a low of 3.1 million in 1975 with a modest increase to 3.6 million by 1980. The number of divorces more than doubled from 500,000 in 1970 to 1,200,000 in 1980 and the number of legal abortions increased from 500,000 in 1971 to 1,300,000 in 1980. There was good reason for Americans to be worried about the traditional family.

 

And if you overlay that on an increase in the female labor force participation rate from 43% in 1970 to 51% in 1980 which meant that the traditional one breadwinner household was falling further and further behind you can add an economic reason for the growing disenchantment of evangelical Christians. Now overlay that with a double-digit inflation you have a formula for deep resentment. To quote Karl Marx, “all that is solid melts into air.” That was the America of 1980.

 

To focus more on the economic side of things the roaring inflation was forcing the average worker into higher and tax brackets, a product of a tightly bracketed tax code. Further, if a second family member entered the labor force the marginal tax rate could very well be as high as 40%. Then of a sudden, the California tax revolt leads to the passage of Proposition 13 which cut property taxes by 60%. Pearlstein is very good with his discussion of this. I was in the middle of it and was quoted in the Howard Jarvis Time magazine cover story that he cites. Its passage gives succor to the Republicans in Congress supporting the Kemp-Roth 30% across the board income tax cut. That will pass later under Reagan.

 

However Pearlstein leaves out three critical factors as to the cause of Proposition 13. First the tax revenue coming in from rising property values was spent by government, not rebated in the form of lower rates. Second, the Crawford vs. L.A. Board of Education decision calling for crosstown busing made the local school less important to the typical suburban voter. Similarly the Serrano vs. Priest decision equalizing school finance detached local property taxes from support of local schools. Both those decisions took place in the early 1970’s which rendered ineffective the anti-Prop 13 message that the schools would be destroyed if the measure passed.

 

One thing that really bothers me about the book is Pearlstein’s reference to corporate lobbyists as “boardroom Jacobins.” He fails to understand that the real Jacobins were in the regulatory agencies who running a regulatory reign of terror against the business community. To be sure much regulation was needed, but the way they went about with little attention paid to cost/benefit analysis created a tough adversarial environment. Further effective business taxation was on the rise because the great inflation was rendering depreciation allowances woefully inadequate and stock prices measured in real terms collapsed. Even Senator Kennedy was supportive of increasing depreciation allowances and he said so in response to me at a rally in Los Angeles.

 

As far as the average industrial worker was concerned the Democratic Party was nowhere to be found. On September 16, 1977 the Youngstown Sheet and Tube factory closed firing 5,000 workers in Ohio’s Mahoning Valley. Within a few years 50,000 steel jobs were lost. The Democrats controlled the White House and had huge majorities in both houses of Congress. They did nothing and it is no wonder that Reagan got the bulk of their votes in 1980. Pearlstein does not mention this.

 

The Reagan we see in Pearlstein’s book is sunny optimist. He is pro-immigration, pro-trade and was way ahead of his time with respect to NAFTA and he had live and let live with respect to gay rights. He opposed the Briggs Amendment, a California anti-gay measure on the ballot in 1978. Thus the Reagan of 1980 is a far cry from the Republican Party of today. Simply put there is no way the wackos in today’s Republican Party would nominate him.

 

Rick Pearlstein gives us great history. It very detailed and well sourced. Despite my quibble above it is a must read for serious students of America’s political culture.

For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/RTGEJNHPIBVNP/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Jon Ward's "Camelot's End: Kennedy vs. Carter and the Fight that Broke the Democratic Party"

Collision Course

Journalist Jon Ward tells the story of how and why the Democratic Party cracked up in the late 1970s through the lens of the Carter-Kennedy fight for the 1980 presidential nomination. The peanut farmer from Georgia and the son of privilege from Massachusetts were on a collision course that began in the early 1970s. Each had an intense dislike of the other at first site.

Ward argues that Kennedy Camelot era ended with the first political defeat of a Kennedy in 1980. Here I beg to differ. Camelot died when Kennedy drove his car off a bridge in 1970 in Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts killing Mary Jo Kopechne.  As an aside although Ward is technically correct in placing Kopechne from Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania but she, in fact, grew up in the suburban New Jersey town of Berkeley Heights since infancy.

The author is very good at describing the give and take of the 1980 campaign. He is especially good at describing the famous Roger Mudd interview of Kennedy where Kennedy couldn’t explain why was challenging the president of his own party and stuttered throughout most of the interview. I have my own experience with Kennedy in 1980 at a rally in Los Angeles. After Kennedy finished speaking he asked for questions and he just happened to call on. With all of the TV lights on me I asked him what he proposed to do about increasing capital formation. It was not a question he expected from this very liberal audience. After hemming and hawing he brought up the Republican sponsored 10-5-3 depreciation program. Kennedy blew it.

My main quibble of the book is that Ward defines the Kennedy-Carter clash in breaking the Democratic Party. To me that was a proxy war for the real problem. Simply put under the weight of stagflation followed by very high inflation, the Democratic nostrums stopped working coupled with the appearance the Democratic Party became the party of retreat abroad opened the way for the candidacy of Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s sunny optimism became the antidote for the failed Democratic policies of the 1970s.

I enjoyed reading Ward’s book. It brought back many memories and he put us in the room where the Carter and Kennedy strategies were made in the face of a very fluid political environment.   

For the full amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R39KFZF48WUKFD/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

   

My Amazon Review of Marc Ambinder's "The Brink: President Reagan and the Nuclear War Scare of 1983"

Eyeball to Eyeball

Marc Ambinder tells a tension packed Cold War story as to how the United States and the Soviet Union faced off against each during 1982-84 when war fears were at their height. He does this against the backdrop of the NATO “Able Archer 83” war game where the NATO forces were defending Germany against a Warsaw Pact invasion. He uses the war game exercise to bring in all of the command and control issues associated with a Soviet nuclear first strike down to the level of the local army commanders who control tactical nuclear weapons on the ground. He also brings in the role of spies on both sides trying to understand the intentions of their opponents. One of the best was Oleg Gordievsky who, before being betrayed, rose to be the KGB Rezidentura in London. Quite a coup for MI-6.

Recall those were the years where the Soviets deployed intermediate range nuclear missiles and NATO countered with its own deployment. The latter giving rise to Soviet supported anti-American demonstrations throughout Europe. In 1983 President Reagan delivered his “evil empire” speech by noting that the Soviet Union “was the focus of evil in the modern world” and shot down Korean Airline Flight 007 when it strayed into their air space. As an aside I thought contemporaneously the Reagan speech was one of his best. 1983 also brought with it the ABC movie “The Day After” which highlighted the impact of a nuclear attack on Kansas City. My wife and I watched it in horror.

I was pleased to see how well Ambinder treats President Reagan and Secretary of State George Schultz. Despite his Cold War rhetoric Reagan sought to understand Soviet motivations and brought in academics and read Russian history to get a sense as to why the Soviets would fear a first strike by the United States. All he needed was a partner and he finally got that partner with Michael Gorbachev.

Ambinder goes into a great deal of the United States’ command and control structure in the event of nuclear war. The logic of nuclear war practically dictated a first strike because the command and control after a nuclear strike would be chaotic. I wish he would have quoted that great geopolitical strategist, Mike Tyson, who said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.”  When reading about the procedures involving our nuclear codes, it scared the living daylights out of me to think that Donald Trump is anywhere near close to them.

My few criticisms of the book is that Ambinder should have given a chapter backdrop about the Soviet nuclear buildup during the 1970s and the legitimate fear it raised in the United States. He goes after what he calls “the nuclear priesthood” without going into real detail. Although he mentions the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, nowhere in his book does mention the critical role played by its leader, Andrew Marshall. Those criticisms aside, Marc Ambinder has written a well-researched history where small miscalculations could have led to nuclear war.

The full Amazon URL appears at: https://www.amazon.com/review/R8IGH7Y35KB14/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Craig Shirley's "Reagan Rising: The Decisive Years, 1976-1980"

The Return of the Gipper

Reagan biographer Craig Shirley has written a hagiographic account of how Ronald Reagan rebounded from his defeat at the Republican convention in 1976 to his nomination four years later. Shirley has written a breezy telling of what happened with lots of inside baseball. Reagan, of course is the hero and the villain of the piece is John Sears his campaign manager who deliberately kept Reagan out of the limelight in 1979. That gave rise to serious opposition, especially from George H.W. Bush. The unsung hero of the Republican return to power is party chairman Bill Brock who picked up the pieces after the narrow defeat of 1976 to Jimmy Carter and an across the board loss in the congressional elections of that year.

My problem with Shirley’s account is that there are too many errors in the book. Among those errors is his view that the economy was weak in 1978. To the contrary, the economy was in an all-out boom. That is the reason the Republicans made only marginal gains in the House and Senate races. He pays lip service to the roll of California’s Proposition 13 which set off a wave of tax cutting in the states and it help legitimize the Kemp-Roth tax cut the Republican were advancing. Without Proposition 13 there would be no Kemp-Roth. He also omits the Steiger Amendment which lowered the capital gains tax in an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress in 1978. Change was in the air and Reagan knew it.

Shirley also misstates Lyndon Johnson record on civil rights. To be sure Johnson was slow to civil rights, but it was through his efforts that the first civil rights legislation since reconstruction passed in 1957 and 1959.

Shirley spends a great deal of time on Reagan’s opposition to the Panama Canal Treaties which became a cause celeb among the Republican right. The treaties passed and now 40 years later nothing really bad has happened. He should have noted that it was a political gimmick from the beginning. But it worked.

Finally although breezy reads well, the book needed much better editing and fact checking. Thus I can only rate it a modest three stars. 

The full amazon URL appears at: https://www.amazon.com/review/R2WTP65BRHZDPT/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of George Melloan's "Free People, Free Markets: How The Wall Street Journal Opinion Pages Shaped America"

The Making of an Editorial Page

Because I have been reading The Wall Street Journal since I was a kid I looked forward to reading “Free People, Free Markets..” George Melloan did not let me down and as a former reporter, columnist and deputy editor of the editorial page has written a definitive history of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. He covers the page’s evolving politics and personalities during it’s over a century history. He is particularly adept at chronicling the roles of Vermont Royster and Robert Bartley in shaping the page from the 1950s to the dawn of the 21^st Century. It was those two editors who catapulted the page into a major force in conservative thought and American journalism. And Melloan had a ringside seat in writing those editorials and serving as Bartley’s deputy.

To me the highlight of the book was Melloan’s recounting his commute from New Jersey into Manhattan on 9/11. I made the same commute on a different New Jersey Transit line and witnessed the second plane hitting the World Trade Center. I worked next door to the then WSJ headquarters and immediately went home. Melloan had a paper to put out and by the efforts of their heroic staff the WSJ was put together at their Princeton printing plant. It was journalistic grace under fire.

What perhaps made the editorial page was their walk on the supply-side in the late 1970s where fiscal orthodoxy was abandoned in favor of broad-based tax cuts. The results came a few years later with the Reagan revolution.

I have a few quibbles though. Sometimes the book reads like a very long newspaper article. I would have liked to see full reprints of a dozen or so editorials that Melloan considers to be the most important. Lastly Melloan leaves out the views of the editorial board prior to America’s entry into World War II. My guess he was not proud of them, but they should have been discussed for the sake of history. 

The full amazon URL appears at: https://www.amazon

.com/review/R3RELX0IF7PBD7/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

An Open Letter to Trump and Cruz Voters in the Republican Primaries

Forgive me for saying this, but I think you are being played. Both Trump and Cruz are tapping into our visceral dislike of the very authoritarian nature of the elite liberals who control the White House and who enforce political correctness throughout the media. It is the authoritarian Obama White House that determines which laws to enforce and which laws to ignore. Indeed it is President Obama who bypasses the Congress to change immigration, environmental and gun laws and is so beholden to political correctness that he refuses to call the radical Islamic terrorists for what they are. It is more than enough to make you angry. But remember, anger is not a policy.

So why am I so down on Trump and Cruz? Plenty! They too are authoritarians who if elected would bend our laws to suit their selfish ends. All we would be doing is substituting one set of authoritarians with another. They are on the flip-side of the Obama coin. How can a Putin worshiper like Trump be trusted with the presidency?  Given the constitutional constraints on the presidency, Trump, given his authoritarian nature, would become a very frustrated bully lashing out at innocent civilians wherever he could find them. His way of insulting his opponents is only a mere foretaste of what would come.

How can a Cruz be trusted with the presidency when he has never led a team in his life and for that matter never really played on a team? He has always been out for himself and that is why he has no friends in the Senate. To him that is a badge of honor. However with that attitude all of his ideas would be dead on arrival and he would be forced to become another Obama by subverting the Constitution. He doesn’t understand what Ronald Reagan knew deep in his bones that politics is the art of the possible. Remember a leader needs followers willing to work with him. Indeed both Cruz and Trump fail the most fundamental daycare test in the book. They don’t play well with others.

So I ask you to think back to all of the great presidents of the past. We may have different ideas of which were great, but I would say does Cruz or Trump remind you of any of them. I doubt it. So you are being played. First by the candidates and second by their cheerleaders on talk radio and the internet who are lusting for power and ratings. For our country’s sake find someone else to support. Otherwise you will end up with not King Trump or King Cruz, but rather with Queen Hillary who might luxuriate with a Democratic House and Senate that a Trump or Cruz candidacy might just bring about. Although “stick it to the man” politics may feel good, trust me, it will end badly.

My Amazon Review of Rick Perlstein's, "The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan"

Rick Perlstein has written a long book, perhaps too long. “The Invisible Bridge…” is really three books: a biography of Ronald Reagan, a political history with an emphasis on the continued rise of the Republican Right and a social history of the mid-1970s. This book follows his two prior books, “Before the Storm…” and “Nixonland…” on the emergence of the Republican Right. Perlstein is a man of the Left, but he tries to understand the motivations behind the success of the Right. In some respects he succeeds, but in others he doesn’t fully emphasize that the period he discusses was one of retreat abroad and recession at home. With the latter along with virulent inflation ends the Keynesian consensus that ruled economics in the postwar period up to that time. Thus the way was open for a politician who offered hope to a nation where it seemed there was only despair. That politician was Ronald Reagan.

Pearlstein enabled me to relive the period that I remember all too well. It seemed that the wheels were falling off the train of history. For example the 1973-76 period encompassed the following:

   *Watergate

   * Defeat in Vietnam

   * CIA scandals

   * The rise of OPEC which triples gasoline prices

   * Assassination attempts on Jerry Ford

   * Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army

   * The widespread distribution of porn

   * The bankruptcy of New York City

   * The growth of weird self-improvement groups like est.

Into this milieu comes the former actor and former governor of California who offers what appears to be simplistic solutions to the liberal elite, but to a yearning public he offers hope and a return to the greatness of America that as Perlstein notes resonates with the 1976 Bi-Centennial. Always under-rated by the pundits Ronald Reagan was far smarter and cannier a politician than his critics realized. And boy did he know how to give a speech.

Perlstein spends a great deal of time on the 1976 Republican convention where Reagan almost rests the nomination from Jerry Ford. Much of this ground was covered by Craig Shirley’s very pro-Reagan, “Reagan’s Revolution.” In fact Shirley has sued Pearlstein for infringing on his material. Shirley’s book is a good read and I recommend it.

What Perlstein gets wrong is his treatment of Reagan’s failed attempt to pass Proposition 1 his tax and spending limitation initiative in 1973. He highlights what he perceives to be its radical nature. In my opinion had Proposition 1 passed the far more “radical” Proposition 13 of 1978 might never have seen the light of day. Pearlstein also get wrong the notion that California coastal development was banned in 1973; not true. What actually happened was new permitting regime under Proposition 20.

Although he opens his book the the return of the Vietnam POWs, he doesn't really deal with the moral crisis associated with the treatment of the returning veterans. To the Right they were drug crazed losers and to the Left they were war criminals. The resentment that this engenders adds fodder to the growth of the Right later in the decade.

One last point Perlstein should remember Eric Ambler’s maxim in “A Coffin for Demitrios,”  “In a dying (although I would use “threatened”) civilization political prestige is the reward goes not to the shrewdest diagnostician, but to the man with the best bedside manner.” Most dour liberals fail to understand this while an optimistic liberal like Bill Clinton knows this in his guts.

All told for readers who have the time for this very long book, it very well worth the read.

The Amazon review appears at the following url:

http://www.amazon.com/review/R5X8PKXC2JNGO