David Stockman
A White House "holding the American economy hostage to a reckless, unstable fiscal policy based on the politics of high spending and the doctrine of low taxes." Though to some that might sound like a description of modern-day Washington, in fact it's from The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, David Stockman's bitter 1986 indictment of the political culture in the nation's capital.
The former Michigan congressman and budget director for Ronald Reagan is surprisingly sanguine about the current borrow-and-spend administration, however. "What we have now is a cyclical ballooning of the deficit that will self-correct, coupled with a temporary bulge in defense spending," he says. "We're not structurally out of balance."
Stockman, 57, has taken on a whole new balancing act since being bounced from the White House nearly two decades ago for his inability to make peace with politics. As chairman and chief executive of Troy, Mich.-based Collins & Aikman, he has his hands full trying to bring the Fortune 500 automotive supplier back into the black after losses in five of the past six years.
It's no easy task. Last month, the maker of car parts ranging from floor mats to instrument panels for the likes of Ford and General Motors reported a loss of $57.5 million for 2003. The company did post a small rise in sales, and Wall Street seems to have faith in the onetime boy wonder who at 34 became the youngest White House budget chief in U.S. history. Collins & Aikman's stock price has headed steadily upward since Stockman took the reins last August and spiked in March despite the news of another losing year after Stockman offered an optimistic forecast for 2004.
Job surge. Stockman's optimism extends more broadly to all of American manufacturing, which he says will eventually benefit from outsourcing, a trend he sees resulting in more, though different, jobs for Americans. "A lot of the jawing about outsourcing by politicians who don't have a clue about what goes on on the shop floor is way overblown," he says.
Between the White House and the CEO suite, Stockman was a managing director at investment bank Salomon Brothers and a partner in two private equity firms, one of which, Heartland Industrial Partners, holds a majority stake in Collins & Aikman.
While Stockman continues to harbor a deep disdain for politics, he seems to find refreshing the logic of profits and losses that rules the business world. "The biggest difference is that in the private sector there's accountability," he says. "The bottom line doesn't lie, and you can't engage in the rhetorical blame passing that is the essence of government policymaking."
Firmly ensconced in the private sector, Stockman isn't a likely candidate to return to Washington. "I don't see that happening, and I don't anticipate being asked." -Matthew Benjamin
This story appears in the April 19, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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