Margaret Thatcher died today, at the age of 87.
As a result, thanks to our British satellite system, we have been watching voluminous coverage of the memories of her life. What strikes me the most is how very different it is from the gushing American coverage. It speaks volumes about the naiveté of Americans in general, and conservatives in particular.
The British coverage on BBC has been much more even handed-unsparing of her failures while quite laudatory of here achievements-which were many-and trying to give a balanced picture of a life that shaped a great deal of Great Britain's post World War II history. American coverage, particularly on Fox-which I have the misfortune to have on my Sky system-not so much.
Americans tend to view her as a British version of Reagan, but in reality she was very different. Consider:
Thatcher slashed, but there was no Reaganesque free candy. She lowered the rates, but she also raised other taxes, such as the value added tax. She was about sacrifice, cutting government subsidies and programs in a way that Reagan never matched. Millions of people went on the dole because of her cuts, whereas the recession in the U.S. did not result from Reagan cutting the budget but from Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker slamming the brakes to wring inflation from the economy. (Reagan did reappoint Volcker once.)
Thatcher called Reagan "the second most important man in my life." And both drew strength from the other. It helped at home. It was hard for Americans or Britons to dismiss their leader as a crazy outlier if your most important ally had an elected leader with a similar worldview. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair would mutually reinforce each other in the same way as they took on their own party's established interests. When Thatcher and Reagan differed, as on the Falklands war, where the Reagan Administration had coddled the "authoritarian" regime in Buenos Aires, it strained the relationship but never broke it.
Consider too-that America later brow beat Britain into its wars, but when the British Navy could have really used our help-in the form of AEW aircraft and refueling, we did the minimum acceptable to get by. The US could have done far more to support Britain in the Falklands, support that it had richly earned, but the US failed miserably in the undertaking. And a year later-it invaded an island where the Queen was head of State without so much as a "by your leave" to the British government.
Americans should also remember that whatever success she had came at a painful cost. 3.3 million were unemployed with no hope of a job. The economy went into recession and the dole was being withdrawn unless you could "prove" you were actively searching for work. It ruined millions of people's lives and put millions more into unproductive boredom and hardship. It cost the country £40b in lost productivity and the only thing Margaret did was make it worse. Furthermore, just as in America 20 years later-it accelerated a gap between the wealthiest 1% and the majority of the population. Tony Blair came to power in part because of that-just as Barak Obama did some 10 years later in the US. Americans tend to forget how bad it really was in Britain for a great while.
Here is a point of view you will not hear on American TV-but probably should:
Thatcher was an evil, twisted woman who encouraged greed and isolation. she decimated the North of England and virtually destroyed my father during the miner's strikes.
I remember one Christmas particularly, during that dark time. The rotary club turned up at the door with a food parcel complete with turkey, veg and a small bottle of sherry.
This was our Christmas – all I can recall of Thatcher's wonder years was imminent threat of redundancy and penury.
Maybe Thatcher did something good for the country, but as a child growing up in Newcastle, I am at a loss as to what this good actually was.
Conservatives in America will love the woman because they will view her through the prism of her friendship with Ronald Reagan. She was, like Reagan, probably what her country needed at the time-but one must never forget the actual facts of her time in office, which had a lot of bad to balance out the good. Just as it was with Reagan.
Regardless of what one thought of her-she did a lot to earn a great deal of respect. However one should never forget the undercurrent that came with that legacy and the deep divisions she fostered in her country. British politics still lives in her shadow-for both better and worse.
But the key point is this: those who admire the deceased public figure (and their politics) aren't silent at all. They are aggressively exploiting the emotions generated by the person's death to create hagiography. Typifying these highly dubious claims about Thatcher was this (appropriately diplomatic) statement from President Obama: "The world has lost one of the great champions of freedom and liberty, and America has lost a true friend." Those gushing depictions can be quite consequential, as it was for the week-long tidal wave of unbroken reverence that was heaped on Ronald Reagan upon his death, an episode that to this day shapes how Americans view him and the political ideas he symbolized. Demanding that no criticisms be voiced to counter that hagiography is to enable false history and a propagandistic whitewashing of bad acts, distortions that become quickly ossified and then endure by virtue of no opposition and the powerful emotions created by death. When a political leader dies, it is irresponsible in the extreme to demand that only praise be permitted but not criticisms.