The Real Reagan Lesson for Romney-Ryan
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan could soon be facing a David Stockman moment. Mr. Stockman was President Reagan’s young, first-term budget director assigned the titanic task of retrenching government spending in the midst of the Cold War. In this role, he made the covers of all the most fashionable magazines as “Mack the Knife” or some other compassionless conservative slashing the growth rate of federal spending to a Dickensian 2% above the inflation rate.
Yet Mr. Stockman ended up capitulating to his critics, abandoning supply-side economics as a naïve mistake, and skulking off to write books and articles about the virtues of “spreading the wealth around.”
Mr. Stockman has re-emerged in this election year echoing President Obama. He writes in the New York Times that vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s “sonorous campaign rhetoric about shrinking Big Government and giving tax cuts to ‘job creators’ (read: the top 2%) will do nothing to reverse the nation’s economic decline and arrest its fiscal collapse.” Fashioning himself as the nemesis of “crony capitalism,” Mr. Stockman blames much of the current economic crisis on the Republicans’ supposed “tax cuts for the two percent.” Here he’s taken a sure path to lavish media laurels as a heroic truth-teller applauded by all the Democratic cronies.
How can Messrs. Romney and Ryan escape the Stockman fate?
By grasping the Peter Drucker wisdom: Don’t Solve Problems. When you solve problems, you end up feeding your failures, starving your strengths, and achieving costly mediocrity. You become a Stockman. Instead of solving problems, pursue opportunities.