A Neo-Calvinist Trapped in Reaganomics

Day of Reckoning
by Benjamin Friedman
Random House, 1988, 323 pp., $19.95

The polls tell us that worship of laissez-faire is on the wane. Collapsing bridges, the Savings and Loan swindles, rising homelessness, the antics of Leona Helmsley and Ivan Boesky have begun to sour Americans on the exaltation of greed as the guiding inspiration of public policy. Republican strategists—who don’t get out of bed without taking a poll—have been on to this for awhile, as was demonstrated by George Bush’s campaign for a kinder, gentler “education Presidency.” Recently, his OMB director, Richard Darman, one of the architects of Reaganomics, has been spe...