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21 | he Year of Living T
Dangerously
R
onLRAd eAgAn And tip o’neiLL, two old Irishmen who guffawed
for the cameras, quickly found that familiarity bred contempt.
O’Neill described Reagan as “a cheerleader for selfishness” and, in
a tactical masterstroke, gave him enough rope early on to hang himself in
deficits as the recession persisted. Yet after Reagan narrowly survived an
assassination attempt two months into his presidency, the speaker was
the first outsider admitted to his bedside. Eyes brimming with tears,
O’Neill knelt and took the president’s hand. Together they recited the 23rd
Psalm. Two years later, the mid-term elections answered O’Neill’s prayers,
not Reagan’s. The Lord works in mysterious ways.^1
Gorton summed it up: “1981 was the Year of the President. 1982 was
the Year of the Senate Republicans. 1983 is the Year of Living Dangerously.”^2
In his budget for Fiscal Year 1984, Reagan called for a 10 percent boost
in military spending and ratcheted up his rhetoric offensive against the
Soviet Union. Reagan noted that the Pentagon’s share of federal spending
had plummeted from nearly 50 percent in 1960 to less than 24 percent in
- The president also envisioned American knowhow developing a
space shield against strategic ballistic missiles. Domenici rolled his eyes.
God only knows what that would cost. O’Neill chortled over this disarray
in the ranks: The deficit was heading for the moon and Reagan wanted to
play “Star Wars.”
Gorton backed the president but was underwhelmed by Weinberger’s
stewardship of Defense. He winced when it was revealed that Boeing was
charging the Pentagon $1,118.26 apiece for the plastic caps fitted to stools
in AWACs planes—and procurement paid it. Snafus like that provided
more ammunition for persistent Pentagon critics like Senator Grassley,
who asked, “Why should we dump huge sums of money into the Defense
Department when it is rotting with bad management?”^3
House Democrats offered the Pentagon a 4 percent boost and proposed
