Word: grieder
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...extent student politicos think they can really change the world with their programs when they get to Washington, they are laboring under an illusion. That, at least, is one of the messages of William Grieder's thoughtful, trenchant, and lively new book, The Education of David Stockman and Other Americans. Grieder is the former Washington Post editor whose interview in The Atlantic Monthly with Stockman, President Reagan's sharp 35-year-old budget director, blew Reaganomics' ideological cover and made "trickle-down economics" a household expression. Now the national affairs editor at Rolling Stone, Grieder has updated the Stockman interview...
...Grieder's view, politics' grand illusion is that policy-making in Washington follows some coherent scheme--that politicians are in control, and that presidents in particular are capable of putting their plans and vision into effect. The illusion is that ideas about how the world works (and should work) have any connection at all to the policy that emerges from the legislative process. The media, Grieder argues, play no small part in propagating this myth of feasibility through their habit of "portraying each new wave of policymakers, regardless of party, as bold and tough-minded rationalists...
...legislative history of the 1981 Reagan tax and budget plan showed, however, reality is a little more complicated. Not only do politicians rarely have a clear notion of the technical features of their own legislation, Grieder claims, but they also are usually powerless against the forces that distort and emasculate even the most comprehensive proposals--inertia, political horse-trading, special interest greed, and just plain human error. In such an "anarchic" milieu, Grieder says, grand conceptions about "the way the world works"--in Stockman's case, supply-side economics--fall by the wayside, and their beliefs lapse into cynical despair...
...campus-politico route--when the bitter truth about Reaganomics became clear. This cynicism, and a powerful sense of betrayal--reflected in the language of treachery ("The Trojan Horse," "opportunism," "Piranhas") with which he described the Reagan initiative to Greider--ultimately made him frustrated enough to spill his guts to Grieder in their Weekly breakfast meetings...
...HAVING DEFINED the problem, Grieder sees a hopeful side to the "anarchy" that reigns in Washington. He finds it quite "reassuring" that politicians don't have all the answers, and that they're often impotent in the face of a legislative process they don't really control. For if they don't, really control. For if they don't, he concludes there must be plenty of holes left in the democratic systems--room for activist citizens to move in and play a powerful role in shaping public policy...