William French Smith was one of the inner circle of powerful men who moved to Washington in 1981 ablaze with loyalty to a new president called Ronald Reagan. Smith spent four years as Reagan's first attorney general and offers an inside look at the Department of Justice, which he headed, calling it one of the least understood institutions in the Capitol. Admitting candidly that "starting a revolution is one thing, but getting results is another," Smith recalls the administration's efforts to reduce violent crime and address the nation's drug problem. Although the justice system faced budget cuts, it was expected to reform the laws on illegal immigration, enforce civil rights laws while eliminating the remedies of quotas and busing, modernize antitrust policies, and convince policymakers and the public that "bigness is not necessarily badness." Diminishing political activism in the federal courts and struggling to protect the prerogatives of presidential power were also expectations of the new administration. In this memoir, completed shortly before his death in October 1990, Smith graphically describes the petty political consideratiions and popular misperceptions that handicap clear thought and decisive action in Washington. Here is an intimate and often humorous portrait of Washington as "the hub of the most effective (though possibly also the least efficient) system of government yet devised by mankind."
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