re: #212 Talking Point Detective

So how do you reconcile that with him shit-canning the air traffic controllers?

Good question. I actually recently read a book review in

National Review

by Steven Hayward. The book is called Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that Changed America (I’m planning to buy the book later this month). The author of the book. Joseph McCartin is a labor historian and though he is of the left, his writing is “right down the middle” fair. One thing that you learn just reading the review is that the Reagan administration actually did make a number of concessions to PATCO, concessions that were considered generous by outside observers. But PATCO was fired up and wanted more. At the same time, the contract offer made to PATCO produced a large amount of Democratics criticism, with Geraldine Ferraro thinking the concessions were a quid-pro-qu. With such charges at its back, the administration could not make further concessions. Thus the union struck and was busted.