Who Was Worse, Reagan or Thatcher?

There goes my vague impression that Carter was sort of OK...

My personal feeling on this poll is that Reagan was worse for his foreign policy, not that Thatcher's was saintly or anything. But then I'm aware that my experience of growing up under Thatcher wasn't that bad compared to others' - my mum always had a job, albeit part-time waitressing/barmaid jobs, there were no mines around where I grew up as far as I'm aware, and my mum did pretty well out of the right-to-buy scheme.

I seemed to get the impres

actually, forget it. I'm not reliving it.

Voted thatch. Am eng. That's all.

There goes my vague impression that Carter was sort of OK...

He was a terrible dress rehearsal for Reagan. In the U.S. he commands no respect as a president.

i always forget carter even was president

If the Simpson's are to be believed, he's history's greatest monster.

ugh "Simpsons" no apostrophe

I'm voting for Reagan just to piss off apolitical Brits.

we should retitle thread, "Who Was Worse According to Our Favorite Post-Punk Bands: Reagan or Thatcher?"

Which 80s demagog inspired the best post-punk bands/songs would be a good poll. And on that one, I almost certainly go for Thatcher.

what would the Mekons think

That wouldn't be a hard choice for this Minutemen fan.

Crass vs Dead Kennedys

Any account of Reagan's mostly heinous foreign policy has to accept the most obnoxiously repeated of right wing toady talking points: he really did inspire jailed dissidents behind the Iron Curtain and in Cuba. I live in a city where even those Cubans who view his presidency as a disappointment or farce took heart from his speeches at the time.

i'm tempted to say Thatcher b/c of her sheer unabashed nastiness (and for all his faults not to mention the actually nasty undertow of his actual politics, Reagan generally didn't come off as a nasty man). OTOH, Reagan's legacy was far more pernicious (to the point that we now have a nominally Democratic President who in some ways is to the right of Reagan).

xpost: Reagan is genuinely revered in Poland. (so's Papa Bush if my relatives are any guide.)

to the point that we now have a nominally Democratic President who in some ways is to the right of Reagan

This leads to my next question: If these people's policies were in fact terrible (and I'm inclined to believe that they were), why have they virtually defined the political centre since then? Thatcher was actually right that her political success can be measured by how far Labour's policies have shifted, wasn't she?

Again, theories of history apply. In America from 1932-1980 we had an unfettered belief in the federal government's obligation to act as neutral arbiter or in some cases enforce fairness; even the GOP subscribed. A counter-reaction had to assert itself.

Again, theories of history apply. In America from 1932-1980 we had an unfettered belief in the federal government's obligation to act as neutral arbiter or in some cases enforce fairness; even the GOP subscribed. A counter-reaction had to assert itself.

Sure, but there has to be some reason why people were willing to embrace this counter-reaction so wholeheartedly. (No strong counter-reaction against republicanism and representative democracy has emerged in American since independence, for example. There are social democratic Northern European countries that have only been marginally influenced by the neoliberal shift.) It's obvious enough to me why the Keynesian consensus emerged in the aftermath of the Depression and WW2. I even get that stagflation began to poke holes in that consensus in the 70s. But if most people seemed to experience that this reaction wasn't working, it seems like they would have abandoned it within a couple of decades, or at least considered abandoning it.

thatcher gave darren hayman that horrible song, so thatcher.

Right-wing Europeans are always scarier than right-wing Americans, IMO. The Americans always seem to have moderating influences.

http://chuckcurrie.blogs.com/chuck_currie/jamesbrolin.jpg vs. http://instinctmagazine.com/images/stories/blogs/jhigbee/july2011/meryl.jpg

my sense is that reagan kind of has to be worse because (as n.v. says) he was in charge of the most powerful country in the world? & therefore had a much more wide-ranging influence globally. i dunno. have we 'reclaimed' reagan yet?

who's we?

you know

"us"

I'm the only one on ILX who's read seven Reagan bios.

does that help?

There was something avuncular about Reagan. Thatcher was very condescending.

Hitchens has said that Thatcher "stank of sex," which is why she made so many of her circle hard for her.

heh al i guess im just wondering if theres a contrarian line of thought on the part of some liberals "reagan wasnt actually that bad for reasons x y"

the way there is for, for example, nixon. (or eisenhower, who seems to be accepted as a pretty good president by most center-left/liberal types)

i think regan has to leave before he can get reclaimed

Well, I said upthread that I endorse his instincts about dealing with Gorbachev, against the advise of every one of his advisors (George Schulz excepted; he needs a rehab too).

Hitchens has said that Thatcher "stank of sex"

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ln4byiMyZF1qfcfhi.gif

Sorry if this has been mentioned already, but hasn't there been placed a Reagan statue in London last week?

I hated Reagan, let's be clear.

i think regan has to leave before he can get reclaimed

― ((( (Lamp), Friday, 8 July 2011 17:33 (4 hours ago) Permalink

Yeah. Are approx half of Britain's politicians and pundits going to still be fucking Thatcher's corpse when she's gone?

what would the Mekons think

If Mars invades we'll all be allies
Reagan Thatcher - won't last long
Reagan Thatcher - dead and gone

(or something like that, I haven't listened to the song for two decades)

i'm going to vote for reagan simply because he actually terrified me as a child whenever i'd see him on tv. he looked like a wax statue that was melting or something.

as for their actual policies, i'd probably still vote reagan, because though i'm sure his efforts at iron curtain raising did inspire people on the soviet side, i'm not 100 percent convinced his efforts were wholly noble (plus i wouldnt exactly say russia's doing so hot now), and we can throw in the bungling of the afghan/soviet war in terms (though the real fallout wouldnt start until he was out of office), the various shennanigans the cia got up to (with or "without" his knowledge), etc etc.

as for songs inspired by them, i always do chuckle whenever i hear "california uber alles" now. its like a songwriter in the early 30s being worried that weimar decadence would continue unchecked.

i recently stumbled on a youtube video where thatcher was responding to a woman who was pressing her about the opening of the falklands war. the sense of entitlement, condescension and bottled-up fury coming from thatcher was so strong that it was almost scary to watch. i half-expected her to scream 'off with her head!' at any moment.

the 'idea/legacy' of Reagan has been more damaging to the world than either of what these two actually did

she does have one of the best hatable politician voices in the era of recorded sound.

reagan's diplomacy with gorby does have to be balanced against his record on other foreign-policy matters: grenada, the iran-contra shit and the first-term massive arms escalation (admittedly started by carter), not to mention his awful record on civil liberties and executive powers (as i think i've noted before, he used more signing statements than any president until dubya). on the other hand, all of his bad qualities have been topped by most of his successors, so it's easier to see him in a better light now.

i guess to make a fair choice we'd have to wait until thatcher's gone and see how much her reputation gets blown up and idealized beyond belief.

i always found it kinda weird that 'california uber alles' was about jerry brown -- did ppl really find him that scary?

They re-recorded it about Reagan

i have to imagine it was either a joke about hippie-haters or jello biafra really was dumb enough to think that a.) reagan wasn't on the horizon or b.) jerry brown wouldn't get his ass handed to him by any number of other republicans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpwdcmjBgNA

i suspect that thatcher did more harm to her own country during her own tenure that reagan did.

yet i think reagan's legacy -- not entirely fairly to him, perhaps -- has been worse and longer lasting than maggie's. do brits carry the torch for thatcher the way american republicans do for reagan (conveniently ignoring the times he raised taxes or negotiated with commies)?

i don't doubt that (american) taxes in the '70s were too high and that the government was wasteful and poorly run. but his "i'm from the government and i'm here to help" catchphrase has been turned into inviolable gospel for the (american) right, and bullshit supply-side economics took hold under him.

it is still kind of amazing that in a six-election span that included fucking *watergate*, the democrats only won the presidency once.

voting for reagan because i see his influence as both more international in its era and more dominant in contemporary politics. perhaps this view is a product of my american blinders, but so be it.

so much to be ashamed of in the reagan era: aids denial, indirect support for apartheid, CIA crimes & misdemeanors around the world, undeclared war on nicaragua, supply-side & "trickle down" economics, emergence and coddling of the radicalized evangelical right, initial moves to repeal glass-steagall & otherwise deregulate banking/lending, anti-intellectualism, etc.

otoh, his administration did work to limit nuclear weapons, raised taxes when appropriate and closed corporate loopholes, negotiated in good faith with the rooskies, inspired eastern europe, etc. and as alfred LS points out, as bad as he seemed to american liberals and progressives in his moment, he wasn't, as it turns out, all that much worse than the democrats who've succeeded him. ;_;

Put it this way, if they put a Reagan statue up in the USA, would it get attacked? Probably not.

whereas a Thatch statue would need a 24hour sentry guard with dogs and rifles.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2580097.stm