"It’s a Nice Idea for a Book, If Only It Were True"

"Most important, Matthews provides no evidence to suggest that whatever personal amicability O’Neill and Reagan maintained mattered. In one or two cases, the Democrats cut good deals with Reagan, such as when they revised the Social Security program. But on the key legislative issue of Reagan’s presidency—the 1981 fight over his budget, which slashed taxes on the rich—O’Neill simply got rolled. Spooked by the president’s popularity, which surged after he was shot by John Hinckley in March of that year, O’Neill failed to compete with Reagan in the new age of media politics. Worse, he also came up short in his supposed strong suit—riding herd on his caucus—as scores of Democrats, fearing the tax-cutting bandwagon, defected to back the Reagan bill. The consequences—skyrocketing budget deficits and debilitating inequality—have plagued us ever since."

David Greenberg in The New York Times reviews Chris Matthews’s Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked.