Book Audits

By John Greenwald

A CONSERVATIVE'S CREED

After flings with Keynesianism and supply-side economics, the U.S. should return to traditional conservative policies. That is Herbert Stein's message in Presidential Economics -- The Making of Economic Policy from Roosevelt to Reagan and Beyond (Simon & Schuster; 414 pages; $16.95). Stein, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 1972 to 1974, describes how more than 30 years of such liberal standbys as tax cuts and increasing Government regulation helped bring about the runaway inflation of the late 1970s. "By 1980," he writes, "the country was ready for a more radical turn of economic policy to the right than had been seen since 1896 -- possibly ever."

Stein finds plenty of fault with President Reagan's supply-side promises.

Stein, who claims to have coined the phrase "supply-side" economics, derisively calls the theory "the economics of joy." It was never possible, he says, to cut taxes, boost defense spending and lower the budget deficit all at the same time. Moreover, "there had been no radical Reagan revolution. Total taxes and total expenditures were still as large as ever, relative the G.N.P. and there was no prospect of any significant reduction for years ahead."

What is needed, Stein argues, is to restrain inflation and reduce the budget deficit through measures like raising the amount of revenue collected from middle-income taxpayers. Stein knows, however, that any consensus for such programs will be hard to reach. He concedes, "The best policy for most is unlikely to be the best policy for all, and those who would lose from the best policy may be able to prevent its adoption."

MANAGING THE BOSS

One of the best-selling business manuals in recent years was The One Minute Manager, a compendium of psychological tips for motivating employees that has sold 2.4 million copies. Now comes The 59-Second Employee (Houghton Mifflin; 108 pages; $5.95), a cheeky but seriously intended rebuttal subtitled How to Stay One Second Ahead of Your One-Minute Manager.

Husband-and-Wife Authors Peter Ward and Rae Andre give employees advice on how to advance by skillfully managing their bosses. Workers, for example, should not settle for the brief, face-to-face praisings that one-minute managers dish out. They should ask for the praise in writing, and then use it to help land promotions or higher pay.

Alert employees

should also refuse to respond to "one-minute reprimands," another keystone of the one-minute manager, in the way their bosses might expect. After an executive has given a worker a one-minute bawling out, the employee is advised to say: "By being angry or disappointed with me you are really punishing my sincere effort. I would be a much better worker if you would stop reprimanding me and would instead help me learn how to do things right." The startled boss, claim the authors, will probably do just that. But then again, he might tell the employee he has 59 seconds to clean out his desk.

THE PROPHET MOTIVE

The Trimtab Factor (Morrow; 144 pages; $10.95) is a plea for businessmen to take the lead in demanding an end to the nuclear arms race. This new entry in the strategic debate is already generating a lot of debate itself. Author Harold Willens, a Los Angeles executive who has long financed liberal causes and most recently led the drive for the nuclear freeze initiative that California voters passed in 1982, argues that nuclear weapons are the Edsel of the 1980s.

The trim tab of the book's title is the small, hinged section on a ship's rudder that helps to steer the vessel. Willens, a real estate developer and onetime textile machinery manufacturer, contends that businessmen are America's trim tab. "Business is the most flexible and change-oriented segment of our society," he writes, and "possesses inordinate power to influence the direction of our national enterprise."

The author calls the arms race a ruinous drain on U.S. resources that can never be won because each side will spend whatever it takes to keep up with the other. "We can no longer consider the nuclear arms race to be an unfortunate fact of life," he writes. "We must be as objective, pragmatic, flexible and unafraid of change as the decision makers who simply stopped making the Edsel." It is still to be seen, however, whether business executives will become the trim tab Willens wants.

--By John Greenwald