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<P><FONT size=-1>By David S. Broder<BR>Thursday, March 29, 2007;
A19<BR></FONT></P>
<P></P>
<P>In the midst of the <A
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2007/03/05/LI2007030500666.html"
target="">travails</A> of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, <A
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032601864.html"
target="">David Stockman</A>, Ronald Reagan's former budget director, burst into
the news as the defendant in a big corporate <A
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032600518.html"
target="">fraud prosecution</A> in New York. It got me thinking, not just about
those two men but about the two presidents who had to wrestle with whether to
keep or fire them.</P>
<P>Is there something about tough-guy conservative chief executives that turns
them squeamish when it comes to firing people? Reagan, who had no hesitation
about building up America's store of arms and telling the communists to "tear
down this wall," couldn't bring himself to let Stockman go -- after the young
budgeteer had committed an egregious breach of loyalty. Now, Bush is hanging on
to Gonzales to the detriment of the Justice Department and the political
embarrassment of congressional Republicans.</P>
<P>The parallels are striking.</P>
<P>For those who have forgotten -- or are too young to know -- the Stockman saga
offers a cautionary lesson on the dangers of brilliant egotism. When I first met
him in 1969, Stockman was a student at Harvard Divinity School, hiding out from
the draft like many others and living as a babysitter with Harvard professor
Daniel Patrick Moynihan and his wife, Liz.</P>
<P>I was on sabbatical at the Institute of Politics, teaching a noncredit
seminar for undergrads, and Moynihan phoned me to say that he had this graduate
student-roomer who was passionately interested in politics and wanted to be in
the class. Of course, I made room for him.</P>
<P>One of my guests during the seminar was Rep. John B. Anderson of Illinois,
and when he became chairman of the House Republican Conference later that year,
he asked if I could recommend one of my students to be his staff director.
Stockman had become a friend, and I knew how eager he was to get to Washington.
His braininess made him a good fit with Anderson.</P>
<P>It took Stockman only five years to move from the staff job to election as a
member of the House from his home district in Michigan -- and only four years in
the House to develop a reputation strong enough for Reagan to make him, at 34,
the youngest Cabinet-level official in a century.</P>
<P>Stockman devised the first Reagan budget, with its broad tax cuts and big
boosts in military spending, and helped move it through Congress over the
objections of skeptical Democrats. At the same time, he secretly began giving
weekly interviews to Bill Greider, a Post editor and an old friend of his. When
Greider published an article based on the interviews, called "The Education of
David Stockman," in the Atlantic magazine, all hell broke loose.</P>
<P>Stockman told Greider that the Reagan budget was built on false premises,
that it employed a "magic asterisk" to conceal the size of its inevitable
deficits and that the tax cuts he had championed were really designed to benefit
the wealthy. The detailed accounting of the internal battles that produced a
budget that would saddle the country with years of debt was a stunning
indictment of the very administration in which Stockman was serving.</P>
<P>Democrats pounced -- just as eagerly as they are now pummeling Gonzales --
and Reagan summoned his young aide to the White House for what Stockman called
"woodshed" treatment. But Reagan didn't fire him. Instead, Stockman issued a
contrite apology and remained in office until 1985.</P>
<P>Now he is accused of breaking the rules again, not by fudging budget numbers
or leaking copiously to a reporter but, allegedly, by concealing from investors
and bankers the dire condition of a Michigan auto parts company he was running.
He has pleaded not guilty.</P>
<P>In terms of biography, Gonzales is totally unlike Stockman. His rise from
poverty to become the first Hispanic attorney general is a great chapter in the
American tradition. He owes his position not to brilliance but to his proven
loyalty to Bush, the man he has served as a counselor for more than a
decade.</P>
<P>But, like Stockman, he has given his president plenty of reasons to fire him.
The Justice Department, a vital part of the federal government, has been reduced
in stature and has lost the trust of both the public and its career employees
under Gonzales.</P>
<P>Bush has modeled himself on Reagan in many ways. One of the worst traits they
share is their reluctance to dismiss people for cause. It took more than three
years of the mismanaged Iraq war for Bush to get rid of Don Rumsfeld.</P>
<P>The Republican White House is too often a no-fire
zone.</P></DIV></BODY></HTML>