? NAME: David Stockman.
? AGE: 65. Born Nov. 10, 1946, Fort Hood, Texas.
? EDUCATION: Michigan State University, Harvard Divinity School.
? WIFE: Jennifer, board president of the Guggenheim museum.
? CAREER: House of Representatives from Michigan, 1977-81; U.S. budget director, 1981-85; Blackstone Group, 1988-99; founder of private equity firm Heartland Industrial Partners, 1999; CEO of car-parts maker Collins & Aikman, 2003-05 (indicted by federal prosecutors for allegedly misleading investors but charges dropped).
? MOST SURPRISING THING ABOUT YOU: “Got Cs in math.”
? WHAT HE’S READING NOW: “The Pity of War,” by Niall Ferguson.
? FAVORITE MOVIE: “Gallipoli” ? “Powerfully dramatizes the folly of wars led by warmongers ? in this case, Churchill.”
? LAST BOOK WROTE: “The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed” (1986).
? BOOK WRITING NOW: “The Triumph of Crony Capitalism.”
? WHAT’S ON HIS DESK: A large paperweight called “On the Brink” by Henry M. Paulson, Jr., the former Treasury secretary. The book is about the government bailouts that Stockman thinks were unnecessary.
? FAVORITE REAGAN MOMENT: “When he filibustered a whole meeting with Tip O’Neill and had him in stitches with off-color Irishman stories.”
? FAVORITE QUOTE: John Maynard Keynes on monetary inflation: “By this means government may secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth of the people, and not one man in a million will detect the theft.”
? FAMOUS FIGURE HE’D MOST LIKE TO DINE WITH: Thomas Jefferson.
? ONE HE’D LEAST LIKE TO DINE WITH: Teddy Roosevelt.
? ANY OTHER LIBERTARIANS IN YOUR FAMILY: “Perhaps, but we can’t agree on the definition.”
