60 Minutes: David Stockman



I missed this interview from last week (did you?). Interesting, conversation worthy -- what a long, strange trip Stockman has been on. Stockman was also on The Week with Christiane Amanpour on Sunday debating the newly empowered conservative Congressman Mike Pence (A Robert Novak fave).

This comes from Ronald Reagan's old budget director. "Stockman, if you remember, was the perfect Picture of Dorian Gray Republican counter-persona hiding behind the broad-shouldered, muscular cowboy image Reagan projected when he was lecturing the world about how poor people had to give up the welfare tit and do their own damn work," is how Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi recently put it.

Even back then, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- one of the towering figures of the age -- said that Stockman had confided in him that even Reagan doubted the tax cut theory. Try explaining that to the teabaggers.