Since the 2016 election Reagan has received a rosy reception among establishment Democrats perhaps his style of slashing social programs for the poor is more palatable to them than Trump’s. In the year after the Atlantic essay, Greider wrote a book, “The Education of David Stockman and Other Americans” (1982), using the essay as a jumping off point for a broader critique of Reaganomics. Greider died Wednesday, leaving a legacy of articles, books and documentaries that revealed the inner workings of political and economic power in America, offering sharp criticism of our capitalist system, and even more importantly, a vision for how to improve it. It was a role he’d continue to play for years, as a writer and editor for multiple outlets, including Rolling Stone, The Nation and The Washington Post, where he was, at various times, national correspondent, an assistant managing editor for national news and a columnist. It also cemented Greider’s reputation as an incisive, clear-eyed journalist willing to speak truth to power. The quote, Stockton later admitted, got him “ taken to the woodshed” by Reagan, who was unsurprisingly dismayed to read his close adviser admitting to flawed economic policies. “None of us really understands what’s going on with all these numbers,” Stockton admitted to Greider. Seeley wrote in her New York Times obituary, “caused a national uproar.” Greider, through his own analysis, and careful, direct questioning over a series of interviews, got Reagan’s budget director, David Stockton, to admit that the president’s vision of low taxes for corporations and the rich had caused immense confusion even within Reagan’s own administration. In 1981, William Greider, who died this week, wrote “ The Education of David Stockman,” an essay for The Atlantic that, as Katherine Q.

William greider obituary