Who Was Worse, Reagan or Thatcher?

Yeah, if you look at the unemployment figures and things like the dollar:pound exchange rate, the 70s looks lovely compared to 1980-86…

I was only equating Mulroney in the sense that he bored me just as much as the other two at the time. The '80s were my 20s: not married, no kids, and bouncing around from job to job (before I got into teaching), the decade was about seeing bands, getting drunk, and beginning to write about music. Mulroney, Reagan, and Thatcher barely existed for me.

I think Reagan's AIDs denial was awful too, but a) I wasn't much better, being fairly oblivious to AIDs till the middle of the decade (and especially till I read And the Band Played On, and b) Alfred has made the case that it was a generational thing, and Mondale or anybody else wouldn't have been any better. I don't agree with the second part of that, but I understand the generational argument.

Also North Sea oil revenue began to kick in, allowing the country to actually afford having millions on the dole... at last! (xxp)

Being a petrostate had its benefits!

Thatcher also had Clause 28 and Christopher Monckton calling for AIDS quarantine camps on her watch too…

Seeing as I left the UK in 1979 and arrived back in 1998, I pretty much missed the entirety of Thatcher's reign so really only know about the details second hand. (n.b. I was never an American citizen, so I was never able to vote in the US, either so my "support" for whatever candidate was fairly symbolic at best.)

I honestly don't know that AIDS denial was a generational thing, I don't buy that excuse - because it's fairly established that for a large swathe of the right wing, the attitude towards any kind of sex (let alone gay sex) was that it is a SIN and if you INDULGE in it you DESERVE to be PUNISHED and therefore get PREGNANT or DIE. As shown by their attitudes towards reproductive health. For one side, it's a medical issue, for the other it's a moral issue, and that isn't generational, it's along the political divide. I certainly don't think that Mondale or any on that side would be denying foreign aid support to any charities that gave out condoms as part of their program. (This is so firmly set in my head I'm going to have to check it with my friend in NYC who works in reproductive health rights.)

Only recently found out Reagan was funding the Khmer Rouge/Pol Pot in exile after the Vietnamese kicked them out of Cambodia, which I mean wtf

Carter did too.

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

This seems like the one to bump for Americans.

Oh, and ...

AIDS denial

... I voted Reagan.

Reagan will get bodies of water named after him.

there's already many puddles of piss named after thatcher