Word: thatchers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...hypocritical for an American liberal who never cared for Ronald Reagan and thinks George Bush is a bad joke to admire Margaret Thatcher? Her latest biographer dismisses the American reaction to Thatcher as one of "drooling effusion...
...British themselves are more divided. There are few outright swooners. And the complaints resemble familiar complaints against the Republican Administration that has ruled America during most of the Thatcher era. She has created, say both the left and the traditional right, a vulgar, selfish, money-obsessed society, drained of more humane values. Her prosperity has been selective; the gap between haves and have-nots has increased. She has ignored the environment, allowed the public infrastructure to rot, starved the universities and other worthy institutions and causes that depend on public funds. For all her talk of freedom...
Reagan never attempted a social transformation of America of this magnitude. That is partly because it wasn't necessary, but partly because he lacked Thatcher's principled determination. Thatcher's biographer Hugo Young says her greatest gift is "inspirational certainty." Reagan had inspirational certainty too, but of a different sort. His inspirational certainty was oblivious to reality, allowing him to call for a balanced budget through eight consecutive years of failing to propose one. Her inspirational certainty is oblivious to popularity, allowing her to produce a government budget that's actually in large surplus. Fiscal policy is one area...
...seeming parallels between the Conservative regime in Britain during the 1980s and the Republican one in America, and for all Thatcher's alleged admiration of Reagan, in an important way the two societies have changed in opposite directions. Thatcher has taught the British people self- discipline. Reagan and Bush have taught Americans self-indulgence. After the past three American presidential elections, it is unthinkable for an ambitious politician to call on the citizenry -- or any sizable subset of it -- to make the slightest sacrifice for the good of society or its own future prosperity. Thatcher, by contrast, positively delights...
Both Reagan and Thatcher nurtured their legends with small yet symbolic military triumphs early in their tenures. But contrast Reagan's famous victory in Grenada with Thatcher's in the Falklands. Grenada was conquered before most Americans even knew Grenada existed. But it was more than a month from the time the British task force sailed to retake the Falklands from Argentina to the time the war was won. Whatever the rights and wrongs of either war, announcing the prospect of a battle is leadership; announcing a victory is not. Whether America will actually defend its freedom with blood...