Reagan's Mandate

About the Book

“Reagan’s Mandate—Anecdotes from Inside Washington’s Iron Triangle,” describes how Washington’s Iron Triangle--the combination of Congress, lobbies, and Administration --changed our national government thirty years ago. The book recounts Dr. McLennan’s journey, in the 1970s and 1980s, from university professor to minority staff member on the House Budget Committee., to the office of a young Senator, to the Treasury Department to work on tax reform, and to the Commerce Department where as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Trade Information and Analysis she represented the U.S. to international organizations and supervised the preparation of numerous government publications.

The memoir is unique because Dr. McLennan was the only Congressional staff member to work both on Reagan’s first budget in the House and his first tax bill in the Senate. These bills passed Congress with strong bipartisan support.  In 1984, as the only Congressional staffer to move to the Treasury Department, she participated in the preparation of the study that proposed tax reform. Based on this study, Congress in 1986 reformed the income tax with bipartisan support. All of these events occurred at a time when very few women held senior positions in the U. S. government

 When Dr. McLennan entered the job market many women didn’t work, and most didn’t pursue higher education.  The only female in many college classes, she became one of very few women in 1965 who earned a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin.  Only small numbers of women then worked as business executives, professors, lawyers, doctors, or senior government officials. “Reagan’s Mandate” tells about women’s progress in the U.S. job market over the last part of the twentieth century.

“Reagan’s Mandate” shows how our federal government made decisions when the President set the agenda, Congress passed the laws, and elected political majorities were small and weak. The memoir addresses election year issues of concern to people who care about the day-to-day operations and policy change in our government: budget balancing, taxes, and international trade.

About the Author

Listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World, Dr. McLennan holds a Ph.D. in Political Science as well as a JD. She served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Trade Information and Analysis and as Industry Economist with the US Treasury. A former association executive, Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University and the College of William and Mary, author, and lecturer on tax, international trade, investment, and telecommunications regulation, she has testified before the US Congress on tax, trade and investment issues.

Dr. McLennan is widely published, having throughout her career prepared technical and policy papers on investment, trade and tax issues.  She has published five books, four law review articles, more than a dozen research reports, nine contributions to books, and numerous magazine and academic journal articles.

Dr. McLennan has been a professor at several universities. Her academic publications include a text book on comparative political systems, a major contribution to the teaching literature which was used in university courses for over ten years. This book received favorable reviews, described by the publisher as “a break-through book, cohesive yet wide-ranging in nature and, in general, a superb synthesis with original conclusions of the best in contemporary comparative politics research.” It was published in two separate editions, Comparative Politics and Public Policy, (Duxbury Press, 1980) and Comparative Political Systems:  Developed and Developing Nations, (Duxbury Press, 1975). As editor and contributor she also published two books of readings, Political Opposition and Dissent (The Dunellen Company, 1973), and Crime in Urban Society (The Dunellen Company, 1970).