The article portrayed someone who had come into the administration hopeful that the free-spending ways of the 1960s and 70s would be ended and that the U.S. Government would embrace fiscal sanity, but had become disillusioned by the whole process.

Because the U.S. economy at the time was mired in a deep recession, and because Stockman was not singing the same happy tune that everyone in the Reagan administration was supposed to be voicing, the article effectively destroyed Stockman’s career in the Republican Party. Democrats seized on comments such as Stockman’s description of the Kemp-Roth tax cuts as "trickle-down" to push their own agenda of high marginal tax rates and more government spending, while Republicans accused Stockman of being disloyal to his boss.