The Real David Stockman

Intended as a corrective to former federal budget director Stockman's forthcoming memoir, this report from Nader's Presidential Accountability Group depicts the controversial ""super-peddler of Reaganomics'' as an expedient power broker who pointedly fought a ``war on the poor'' in his four years as head of the Office of Management and Budget. Drawing on interviews, the authors trace Stockman's Michigan upbringing, his antiwar activism in college, his growing conservatism as director of the House Republican Conference and as a ``get-tough'' congressman, and finally his work as professed champion of the Reagan administration's ``supply-side'' ideology at OMB. The authors claim that Stockman's ``personal agenda,'' however, was to cut the federal budget, estranging him from supply-siders and having devastating impacts on social programs. Greenya and Urban quote many, including former supporters, who describe Stockman as an arrogant workaholic whose ``ideological fervor and rigidity,'' as the authors put it, led to acts of personal and professional betrayal. Greenya's books include For the Defense (with F. Lee Bailey); Urban is a legislative assistant on Capitol Hill. (June 2)