“Revolution”, by Martin Anderson

 

486 pages, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, ISBN-13: 978-0151770878

Martin Anderson was an economist, policy analyst, author and one of President Reagan’s leading advisors, where he served as the chief domestic policy advisor from 1981 to 1982 and then as a member of the President’s Economic Policy Advisory Board from 1982 to 1989. His book, Revolution, is basically an Operator’s Manual for the Presidency, written by one who was present at the creation of the Reagan administration. Lest one forget – and most people have – when Reagan took office after a series of very supposedly very bright Presidents who obviously were not up to the job, the prevailing opinion was that the job of POTUS had become simply too big for any one man to handle competently.

But, since Reagan, nobody thinks that any more, and Anderson was one of the many advisors who helped to implement that thing called “Reaganomics” (are you old enough to remember when that term began as a pejorative and became a compliment, only after it began to work? I am). Anderson was one of the people who helped show how tax cuts work and why doing them is good for all, being one of the leading prophets who helped Reagan persuade others within government of the benefits associated with his program. But this is a book about much more than economics, as Anderson also dissects the advantages and disadvantages inherent in Reagan’s management style by shedding light into the personalities that inhabited the West Wing and all of the fights that went on behind closed doors.

As such, Revolution is not just a memoir in which the author explains only that which made him someone to be looked up to, rather it is a sober work in which one recounts the mistakes and good decisions he made; Martin Anderson shows us how he did it.