In the extracts from David Stockman's memoirs published on Monday 14 April by Newsweek, Reagan's former Budget Director spoke of the mediocrities, charlatans and power-hungry politicos who cluster around the disturbingly vague and incompetent Great Communicator. For them, Stockman said, 'reality-time' was the seven o'clock evening news on television. How did we look and sound? they ask themselves, as if public policy were some sort of show designed to entertain and please 'the American people' once a day, five nights a week. On 14 April reality-time began on each of the three networks with the same first indications of an American strike against Libya.

LRB 8 May 1986 | PDF Download