The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America

One of the reviewers stated, "Citing the 2008 failure of John McCain and Sarah Palin to win the White House despite using the same sales pitches as Reagan, he implies the public is finally seeing the rain outside its door despite the claims of sunshine by the power brokers and their flacks." How very true those words are. We live in a time of danger that the registered voters of our country could still elect dangerous people like McCain and Palin. As I write this review, President Obama is suffering in the polls and he has and is disappointing many of his supporters, me included! If you read this book and keep it for reference, I don't think you would likely make the mistake of voting for the opposite swing of the political pendulum. Except that given human nature it is possible that enough people will make the mistake of voting in the right-wing extreme at some point and continue to destroy our nation even further. At this time, which is the day before Thanksgiving 2009, unemployment in the United States is the worst it has ever been. I won't go into more details about the economy, books like "The Looting of America" establish the reasons clearly enough. I mention it only to say that this time things may be different as it has never been this bad. And it is really bad! It is all traceable right back to the effect that the Reagan Administration and its policies has had on our beloved country. May God help us and may we help ourselves.

In 2008, Barack Obama caught much flack for saying effectively that Reagan was the most influential politician over the past few decades. He went on later to explain that this truism did not mean he agreed with Reagan's policies but was simply fact. The best example of this "Free Market Capitalism" (free to assault the average American pocketbook) was Bill Clinton agreeing to open Media to concentration and Citicorp to investment banking and insurance which was the mantra that Reagan instilled. He effectively broke America's safeguards against unrestricted corporate and banking power that we had set up after the roaring twenties crashed down on us. This book goes through most of Reagan's destructiveness (it left out the efforts to reduce chilhood immunizations and other public health measures- there is so much to cover). It points out how well he kept his fingerprints off the destructiveness by basically hiring a corporate mafia that had and still has contempt for Americans and looks at their rights as basically a right to be a lucky winner in a sea of destitute workers

I found the *Introduction* fascinating, albeit a bit redundant, but Chapter after Chapter unveils facts and insights I didn't think existed. This is more than a de-Mythication (if you will): it's a timeline of hypocrisy, and it is not limited to the GOP. Yes, the main theme is that Reagan's populism was more from his Hollywood past than his upbringing and the values he appeared to believe strongly in, but here we see how a misguided, mixed up Administration made a mess that we're still cleaning up. It's great to have vision but a President needs to have his team together; has to hire the right people; has to understand how Congress works; has to study the previous administration and not fix things that aren't "broke". And the American people must be willing to criticize a guy they like.

Had a discussion a couple of years back with a politician (liberal) on the subject of comparing Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. His argument was that Reagan damaged the country more than Bush did - that his policies set the pattern and created the framework for what Bush would extend so significantly three terms later on. This book makes the most of that argument, that the pattern and path set by Reagan were what allowed for so many of the excesses of the second Bush Administration, even if Reagan himself never went quite that far. (In a few spots, the book suggests that Reagan himself would have been appalled at some of what transpired in this decade.) It is a polemic, an argument, and it isn't a balanced book on Reagan. That isn't its mission; somewhat like Seymour Hersh's The Dark Side of Camelot, its purpose is as a corrective to a side of that story that in recent years hasn't gotten enough attention. If it strains a little at times, it also contains a pile of useful material on parts of the Reagan years too easily forgotten, or maybe never learned by those who came of age since. It is also, by the way, solely devoted to Reagan's domestic activities. Will he do a sequel on Reagan's foreign policy?

Kleinknecht opens by telling us that the Reagan legacy has been devastating for America - especially ordinary Americans. Boom-and-bust cycles, obscene CEO salaries, emergence of "Lockdown America", drug-company scandals, collapsing bridges, huge government deficits, ethical absences, plummeting/stagnating wages for working people, the flight of U.S. manufacturing abroad are all products of Reagan's free-market zealotry and gutting the public sector. Reagan also pioneered the use of wedge issues like race ("welfare queens," "war on drugs"). Kleinknecht also says the book was borne of bewilderment over the myth that continues to surround the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who he characterizes as an empty suit who believed in flying saucers and allowed an astrologer to guide his presidential scheduling. We just finished a presidential campaign season marked by unseeming competition among Republican aspirants to wrap themselves in the Reagan mantle. Some portions of "The Man Who Sold the World" are missing credible documentation; others blame Reagan for actions that only began during his leadership and were extended by Bush I and II, and Clinton. His 1987 appointment of Alan Greenspan (Mr. Bubbles) to head the Federal Reserve may have been Reagan's worst, given Greenspan's key role in the dot.com and housing bubbles, but we cannot forget he was reappointed again and again by other presidents until 2006. Deregulation of airlines and trucking are also attacked, though undertaken by Carter. And finally, Kleinknecht misses some important additional Reagan actions - eg. undermining Carter's fuel economy and alternative energy initiatives, and the whole Iran-Contra fiasco. Nonetheless, the book still is an important contribution. Reagan was well known for stories not quite rooted in fact, and his statistics were similarly also sometimes loose. This included his war on regulation and Murray Weidenbaum's (became Reagan's Chairman of Economic Advisers) conclusion that federal regulations cost the economy $103 billion/year in 1978, including $666/car. The Bureau of Labor Statistics later repudiated some of Weidenbaum's methodology and a subsequent year-long Wall St. Journal sponsored study of the 48 largest firms vs. the six most active regulatory agencies found the regulatory impact only 1.1% ($2.6 billion). Worse yet, Weidenbaum's analysis omitted any benefits from these regulations, and Japanese firms spent more for compliance and still cost less. Unfortunately, Weidenbaum's study came first, got all the press, and inspired the administration's weakening of regulations through reducing enforcement funds and installing leaders who didn't believe in regulation. The finance industry particularly benefited. By the beginning of the 1980s, an estimated two-thirds of the nation's thrifts were losing money, and thousands virtually insolvent. Regulatory relief including increasing FDIC coverage from $40,000 to $100,000, allowing developers to own thri