This title is from an award-winning journalist, a major work of reporting and history that shatters the myth of Ronald Reagan. Since Ronald Reagan left office - and after his death especially - his influence has loomed over American life. Singled out for his 'courage, his kindness, his persistence, his honesty, and his almost heroic patience in the face of setbacks', a number of conservatives, from the late William Buckley to his former speechwriter Peggy Noonan to Republican nominee John McCain have looked to Reagan as a figure to regenerate the American conservative tradition as the Bush White House stumbles through crisis and scandal. This carefully calibrated image is a complete fiction, however. The Reagan presidency was epoch-shattering, but not - as his propagandists would have it - because it invigorated private enterprise, toppled the Berlin Wall or made America feel strong again. Rather what gives Reagan such an awesome legacy is that he presided over the dismantling of one of the greatest social experiments in human history-an eight-decade period of reform in which working people were given an unprecedented sway over US politics, economy, and culture. Reagan halted this forward march toward democracy almost overnight. In "The Man Who Sold the World", journalist William Kleinknecht explores Middle America and shows how Reaganism put the poor and working class back on the margins of everything except the basest popular culture. This scathing indictment of the Reagan legacy is the first comprehensive book to deal seriously with Ronald Reagan's place in contemporary America. Just as Americans are trying to grapple with the legacy of George W. Bush, "The Man Who Sold the World" shows how poorly we understand Reagan's.
The Man Who Sold the World
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Crime writer Kleinknecht (New Ethnic Mobs) turns his attention to a different kind of organized crime in this critical reassessment of the lasting influence of Ronald Reagan's presidency—and his hand in the current economic crisis. According to the author, Reagan and his ideological fellow travelers abdicated the government's regulatory role to oversee banking, manufacturing, telecommunications, the media, mining and public welfare, leaving Americans without protection from the avarice of shortsighted corporations. While well-documented and forceful, the book has a strident tone that might put off the very people Kleinknecht tries to persuade—those who have lionized Reagan as the people's president. More crucially, the author tries to lay everything from the decline of America's image overseas to the 2008 meltdown of the global banking system at Reagan's feet, and it is often unclear whether Reagan was the mastermind or simply the figurehead behind which other agents carried out their own plans independent of the president's will. Whatever Reagan's complicity, the policies carried out in his name and under his leadership clearly changed the relationship between the American people and their government, and rarely, the author shows, for the better. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Kleinknecht shares Will Bunch’s opinion of Ronald Reagan’s current image (see Tear Down This Myth, 2009) but doesn’t credit Reagan, as Bunch does, for failing to match action to rhetoric. Of course, Kleinknecht doesn’t mention foreign policy, in which Reagan did some good. His focus is domestic, and in 11 cogent chapters, he reveals further falseness in the Reagan myth and the devastating effects of Reaganism on America per se. Reagan pretended to represent small-town, small-enterprise America as embodied by his hometown, which, after leaving for Hollywood, he seldom visited and only for personal publicity’s sake, and whose livelihoods of family farming and small industry his favoritism for high-rolling wheeler-dealers has nearly extinguished. To explain Reagan’s duplicity, Kleinknecht contrasts Reagan’s developed politics of the self with the traditional community politics of his practical opponent during his administration, Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill. While O’Neill was inextricable from his community, Reagan made himself a man from nowhere, untrammeled by personal connections, who ignored all damage done in the pursuit of self-aggrandizement. Contemporary America’s decimated manufacturing, fraudulent banking and finance, criminalized poor and minorities, inaccessible health care, venal politics—all this and more, according to Kleinknecht, constitute the real and living Reagan legacy. --Ray Olson
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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146 of 186 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Kleinknecht opens by telling us that the Reagan legacy has been devastating for America - especially ordinary Americans. Boom-and-bust cycles, obscene CEO salaries, emergence of "Lockdown America", drug-company scandals, collapsing bridges, huge government deficits, ethical absences, plummeting/stagnating wages for working people, the flight of U.S. manufacturing abroad are all products of Reagan's free-market zealotry and gutting the public sector. Reagan also pioneered the use of wedge issues like race ("welfare queens," "war on drugs").
Kleinknecht also says the book was borne of bewilderment over the myth that continues to surround the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who he characterizes as an empty suit who believed in flying saucers and allowed an astrologer to guide his presidential scheduling. We just finished a presidential campaign season marked by unseeming competition among Republican aspirants to wrap themselves in the Reagan mantle.
Some portions of "The Man Who Sold the World" are missing credible documentation; others blame Reagan for actions that only began during his leadership and were extended by Bush I and II, and Clinton. His 1987 appointment of Alan Greenspan (Mr. Bubbles) to head the Federal Reserve may have been Reagan's worst, given Greenspan's key role in the dot.com and housing bubbles, but we cannot forget he was reappointed again and again by other presidents until 2006. Deregulation of airlines and trucking are also attacked, though undertaken by Carter. And finally, Kleinknecht misses some important additional Reagan actions - eg. undermining Carter's fuel economy and alternative energy initiatives, and the whole Iran-Contra fiasco. Nonetheless, the book still is an important contribution.
Reagan was well known for stories not quite rooted in fact, and his statistics were similarly also sometimes loose. This included his war on regulation and Murray Weidenbaum's (became Reagan's Chairman of Economic Advisers) conclusion that federal regulations cost the economy $103 billion/year in 1978, including $666/car. The Bureau of Labor Statistics later repudiated some of Weidenbaum's methodology and a subsequent year-long Wall St. Journal sponsored study of the 48 largest firms vs. the six most active regulatory agencies found the regulatory impact only 1.1% ($2.6 billion). Worse yet, Weidenbaum's analysis omitted any benefits from these regulations, and Japanese firms spent more for compliance and still cost less. Unfortunately, Weidenbaum's study came first, got all the press, and inspired the administration's weakening of regulations through reducing enforcement funds and installing leaders who didn't believe in regulation and would interpret regulations in a more 'business-friendly' manner.
Between 1962 and 1983 the average household net worth of those in the bottom 40% rose from $800 to $4,700 in 1998 dollars. When Reagan left office in 1989 it was a negataive $4,100, reaching only $1,100 by 1998. Between 1983 and 1989 the net worth of the middle 20% increased from $55,500 to $58,800 (6%), vs. 27% for the top 1% and 9% for the top 2-10%. By 1983 federal tax receipts from corporate income taxes hit 6.1%, down from 32% in 1952 and 12.5% in 1980.
Regan, Sec. of Treasury, worked to eliminate all controls on the types of loans provided by banks and other institutions - leading to the S&L crisis. Restrictions binding them to a specific area were lifted, as well as interest rate ceilings on deposits; FSLIC insurance was increased from $40K to $100K and large institutional investors could then split funds into parcels fully insured around the nation. Changes in accounting practices were approved that let failing S&Ls (about 800) inflate their worth and stay in business; eliminated the requirement for 400 stockholders and allowed developers to own S&Ls and loan money to themselves with no money down. The scandal broke open in 1989, wasn't even mentioned in the 1988 campaign. He also initiated repeal of Glass-Steagall - work finished in 1999. While Congress deregulated more industries during Carter and Clinton years than Reagan-Bush years, Reagan achieved deregulation by odering the bureaucracy to stop enforcing existing regulations and reducing their funding. He also gave a potent political voice to the backlash against regulations.
The finance industry particularly benefited. By the beginning of the 1980s, an estimated two-thirds of the nation's thrifts were losing money, and thousands virtually insolvent. Regulatory relief including increasing FDIC coverage from $40,000 to $100,000, allowing developers to own thrifts and borrow from them, loosening accounting practices to boost net worth, and freeing them from investment restrictions. The result - the 1989 S&L debacle that required $150 billion in taxpayer bailouts.
Kleinknecht believes the rapid rise of M&A activity under Reagan's relaxed anti-trust enforcement became a prime cause of our manufacturing decline. CEOs lived in fear of 90%-leveraged LBOs using the firm's own assets as collateral, instead of focusing on customers and the Japanese. The M&A/LBO debts incurred ($33+ billion in 1981, plus at least another $70 billion tied up in merger-related loan commitments) hampered firms from investing in new equipment and made them more vulnerable to downturns. Between 1980-86, M&A went from 1,565 ($33 billion) to $4,323 ($204 billion).
Business tax cuts, instead of spurring new investment in equipment, were largely used for M&A as well. Kleinknecht cites the example of G.E. - paid no income tax the first three years of Reagan, received $283 million in rebates (despite pretax profits exceeding $6.5 billion), while shedding 50,000 jobs through layoffs, attrition, and selling subsidiaries. Meanwhile, it acquired RCA and NBC, among others.
A number of credible studies document long-term stock losses by the majority of merged companies. A Wall St. Journal study in 2002 found the stocks of the 50 biggest corporate acquirers fell 3X the DJIA.
Kleinknecht's data on "Lockdown America" is quite limited, consisting of data from New Jersey. In 1980 it had 76 prison inmates per 100,000 population, and 331 in 2002; meanwhile, violent crime increased.
Overall, "The Man Who Sold the World" is important reading.
Kleinknecht also says the book was borne of bewilderment over the myth that continues to surround the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who he characterizes as an empty suit who believed in flying saucers and allowed an astrologer to guide his presidential scheduling. We just finished a presidential campaign season marked by unseeming competition among Republican aspirants to wrap themselves in the Reagan mantle.
Some portions of "The Man Who Sold the World" are missing credible documentation; others blame Reagan for actions that only began during his leadership and were extended by Bush I and II, and Clinton. His 1987 appointment of Alan Greenspan (Mr. Bubbles) to head the Federal Reserve may have been Reagan's worst, given Greenspan's key role in the dot.com and housing bubbles, but we cannot forget he was reappointed again and again by other presidents until 2006. Deregulation of airlines and trucking are also attacked, though undertaken by Carter. And finally, Kleinknecht misses some important additional Reagan actions - eg. undermining Carter's fuel economy and alternative energy initiatives, and the whole Iran-Contra fiasco. Nonetheless, the book still is an important contribution.
Reagan was well known for stories not quite rooted in fact, and his statistics were similarly also sometimes loose. This included his war on regulation and Murray Weidenbaum's (became Reagan's Chairman of Economic Advisers) conclusion that federal regulations cost the economy $103 billion/year in 1978, including $666/car. The Bureau of Labor Statistics later repudiated some of Weidenbaum's methodology and a subsequent year-long Wall St. Journal sponsored study of the 48 largest firms vs. the six most active regulatory agencies found the regulatory impact only 1.1% ($2.6 billion). Worse yet, Weidenbaum's analysis omitted any benefits from these regulations, and Japanese firms spent more for compliance and still cost less. Unfortunately, Weidenbaum's study came first, got all the press, and inspired the administration's weakening of regulations through reducing enforcement funds and installing leaders who didn't believe in regulation and would interpret regulations in a more 'business-friendly' manner.
Between 1962 and 1983 the average household net worth of those in the bottom 40% rose from $800 to $4,700 in 1998 dollars. When Reagan left office in 1989 it was a negataive $4,100, reaching only $1,100 by 1998. Between 1983 and 1989 the net worth of the middle 20% increased from $55,500 to $58,800 (6%), vs. 27% for the top 1% and 9% for the top 2-10%. By 1983 federal tax receipts from corporate income taxes hit 6.1%, down from 32% in 1952 and 12.5% in 1980.
Regan, Sec. of Treasury, worked to eliminate all controls on the types of loans provided by banks and other institutions - leading to the S&L crisis. Restrictions binding them to a specific area were lifted, as well as interest rate ceilings on deposits; FSLIC insurance was increased from $40K to $100K and large institutional investors could then split funds into parcels fully insured around the nation. Changes in accounting practices were approved that let failing S&Ls (about 800) inflate their worth and stay in business; eliminated the requirement for 400 stockholders and allowed developers to own S&Ls and loan money to themselves with no money down. The scandal broke open in 1989, wasn't even mentioned in the 1988 campaign. He also initiated repeal of Glass-Steagall - work finished in 1999. While Congress deregulated more industries during Carter and Clinton years than Reagan-Bush years, Reagan achieved deregulation by odering the bureaucracy to stop enforcing existing regulations and reducing their funding. He also gave a potent political voice to the backlash against regulations.
The finance industry particularly benefited. By the beginning of the 1980s, an estimated two-thirds of the nation's thrifts were losing money, and thousands virtually insolvent. Regulatory relief including increasing FDIC coverage from $40,000 to $100,000, allowing developers to own thrifts and borrow from them, loosening accounting practices to boost net worth, and freeing them from investment restrictions. The result - the 1989 S&L debacle that required $150 billion in taxpayer bailouts.
Kleinknecht believes the rapid rise of M&A activity under Reagan's relaxed anti-trust enforcement became a prime cause of our manufacturing decline. CEOs lived in fear of 90%-leveraged LBOs using the firm's own assets as collateral, instead of focusing on customers and the Japanese. The M&A/LBO debts incurred ($33+ billion in 1981, plus at least another $70 billion tied up in merger-related loan commitments) hampered firms from investing in new equipment and made them more vulnerable to downturns. Between 1980-86, M&A went from 1,565 ($33 billion) to $4,323 ($204 billion).
Business tax cuts, instead of spurring new investment in equipment, were largely used for M&A as well. Kleinknecht cites the example of G.E. - paid no income tax the first three years of Reagan, received $283 million in rebates (despite pretax profits exceeding $6.5 billion), while shedding 50,000 jobs through layoffs, attrition, and selling subsidiaries. Meanwhile, it acquired RCA and NBC, among others.
A number of credible studies document long-term stock losses by the majority of merged companies. A Wall St. Journal study in 2002 found the stocks of the 50 biggest corporate acquirers fell 3X the DJIA.
Kleinknecht's data on "Lockdown America" is quite limited, consisting of data from New Jersey. In 1980 it had 76 prison inmates per 100,000 population, and 331 in 2002; meanwhile, violent crime increased.
Overall, "The Man Who Sold the World" is important reading.
42 of 57 people found the following review helpful
By C. Wagner
Format:Hardcover
This book was particularily painful to me, because I remember the President's announcement that we would have a one world economy and watched my home town slide from a bastion of business and industry to a place of poverty where Feed Our Children sends tractor trailers full of food. Yet the subject of Kleinknecht's no-holds barred expose is one of our two best loved modern presidents.
I have given this book 4 rather than 5 stars because it is currently being ignored and will soon be forgotten, even though it is a title that should be a part of all U.S. history collections.
Here follows a minor insight into the content of the title:
"The contagion of free-market purisim has infected almost every sector of American life (p xii)." He cites a rising inequality whith those on top reaping the benefits and claims the obvious that trickle economics is a fallacy. "With Reaganism has come an abandonment of all faith in reason and progress." There is the decline of heavy industry (p.7) and the factory farm policies which have all but destroyed family farms (p. 11). The destruction of unions was an obvious plus for the haves and a bitter pill to swallow for the nots.
But, to get back to the title of this essay: "...the ignomy of social Darwinism which had nourished a view of the lower classes as predestined by genetics and breeding to live in squalor (pp.24-25)." Perhaps the term anti-social Darwinism would have been more to the point.
Corporate income tax drops created a sea of red ink helping to justify the cutting of beneficial social programs (p. 29). As a pioneer of the use of soft money for campaigning this administration walked point for the election styles of the present (p.59).
The business of this presidency, said the author was business (p. 70). This included the evisceration of regulations a more sensible generation had put into place which led to financial disasters (p. 72) that taxpayers just just begun to fund. The destruction of the 1927 McFadden Act which restricted the ability of financial institutions to operate in more than one state was a disaster still not entirely realized and Proxmire's prediction of doom was laughed at (p.109). The author said that the move was to "Privatize the wealth and socialize the risk (p.119.)" The list goes on and on.
This book deserves to be read slowly and seriously.
I have given this book 4 rather than 5 stars because it is currently being ignored and will soon be forgotten, even though it is a title that should be a part of all U.S. history collections.
Here follows a minor insight into the content of the title:
"The contagion of free-market purisim has infected almost every sector of American life (p xii)." He cites a rising inequality whith those on top reaping the benefits and claims the obvious that trickle economics is a fallacy. "With Reaganism has come an abandonment of all faith in reason and progress." There is the decline of heavy industry (p.7) and the factory farm policies which have all but destroyed family farms (p. 11). The destruction of unions was an obvious plus for the haves and a bitter pill to swallow for the nots.
But, to get back to the title of this essay: "...the ignomy of social Darwinism which had nourished a view of the lower classes as predestined by genetics and breeding to live in squalor (pp.24-25)." Perhaps the term anti-social Darwinism would have been more to the point.
Corporate income tax drops created a sea of red ink helping to justify the cutting of beneficial social programs (p. 29). As a pioneer of the use of soft money for campaigning this administration walked point for the election styles of the present (p.59).
The business of this presidency, said the author was business (p. 70). This included the evisceration of regulations a more sensible generation had put into place which led to financial disasters (p. 72) that taxpayers just just begun to fund. The destruction of the 1927 McFadden Act which restricted the ability of financial institutions to operate in more than one state was a disaster still not entirely realized and Proxmire's prediction of doom was laughed at (p.109). The author said that the move was to "Privatize the wealth and socialize the risk (p.119.)" The list goes on and on.
This book deserves to be read slowly and seriously.
17 of 24 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good book, but keep in mind that a lot of this didn't start with Reagan, he just expanded
May 12, 2010
By Jack Mehoff
Format:Paperback
I never understood this fascination with Ronald Reagan. Didn't much manufacturing move overseas in the 80's? Deregulation which drove up prices and put the airline industry in a tailspin? And corporate raiders looted pension funds and left millions of Americans w/o retirement money? And the savings and loan scandal? The Iran-Contra scandal? Reagan was a disaster on the international front, supplying weapons to Iran in direct violation of Congress, when Hezbollah blew up our Marine barracks in Lebanon, and tortured to death William Casey, the head of the CIA station there, what did Reagan do? He withdrew US forces! He didn't strike back, he cowered and ran. Actions like these encouraged the terrorism and Islamic extremism that we see today. Or how about when Israel was ready to crush the PLO once and for all? No, Reagan arranged for Arafat and his thugs to go safely to Tunisia!!! Reagan was a disaster, of course manufacturing started moving overseas before him, deregulation started before him, failure to deal with Islamists started before him, but he did a lot of damage to the US both domestically and internationally, he was the guy who really propelled he big business agenda which is at direct odds with citizens.
This book deals with the Reagan disaster on the home front, just keep in mind while reading it that he didn't start a lot of this, but he was the man who really propelled the agenda.
This book deals with the Reagan disaster on the home front, just keep in mind while reading it that he didn't start a lot of this, but he was the man who really propelled the agenda.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Stimulating Book
Mr. Kleinknecht does a very good job of exploding the Reagan myth and demonstrating how the American press has given him a pass. Read more
Published 25 days ago by John McElhose
5.0 out of 5 stars
Confirms everything I have suspected for years.
From the get-go I always believed Ronald Reagan was a "B" actor playing a role. I voted for him and lived to regret it. Read more
Published 1 month ago by nancy butler
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Small Glimmer of Truth
Since studying business and law in graduate school, every search for solutions to our policy problems has led me back to the changes made under Reagan. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Rebecca S Turley-Summers
5.0 out of 5 stars
Eye Opening!
I grew up during the Reagan Revolution and I've struggled to reconcile my memories of those times with the facts and the Reagan Myth. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Jeff Coatney
5.0 out of 5 stars
Won Over!
I lived through the 80's and live to tell about it. I use to believe that if the country (via President Reagan)could live with deficit spending, so could I! Read more
Published 16 months ago by B. Rodriguez
5.0 out of 5 stars
A non-fiction that is Non-Fiction, Great!
Two things make this book stand out. Honesty and straightforward facts! It took a great deal of time and resources to investigate and document the facts that led to the public... Read more
Published 17 months ago by Concerned
5.0 out of 5 stars
Most Eye Opening Book of the Year... and well written!
Kleinknecht has done us all a great favor. This is one of a very few political biographies of Reagan that dares to be detailed AND critical. Read more
Published 19 months ago by B. Burge
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Correction for Our National Alzehimers
This is an astoundingly complete book documenting all of the catastrophes Reagan delivered to our failing democracy and crumbling empire. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Thomas W. Day
2.0 out of 5 stars
A poor analysis of an important issue
I was born in 1990, and pretty much my only two experiences of Ronald Reagan were the occasional anti-Reagan rant of my mother after listening to a particularly disheartening piece... Read more
Published 22 months ago by Kyle Gardiner
5.0 out of 5 stars
Chronicles America's sad decline from its Golden Age
The corporate takeover of America, disasters stemming from the deregulaion of business, repercusions from the collapse of Enron, the subprime mortgage scandal, the near collapse of... Read more
Published 23 months ago by J. Alan Bock
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