Transformers of World Policy

Campus Report ^ | November 27, 2007 | Heyecan Veziroglu

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Transformers of World Policy

Heyecan Veziroglu, November 27, 2007

Nicholas Wapshott’s book on Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, A Political Marriage, offers first hand observations these leaders transformed the world. Drawing on never before published correspondence transcripts, private letters, and telephone calls, he argues that their relationship was much deeper than an alliance of mutual interests. Reagan additionally deserved lesser to great credit for the Fall of Communism.

“Theirs was a political marriage, the bond is based upon ideology and the true meaning of the minds,” he said. Author Wapshott added, “When they met in 1975, they were both between jobs. Reagan finished his two terms Governor of California and had been the favorite conservative to become the Presidential nominee. Reagan and Thatcher both came to positions of leadership when their nations needed them most. Both of them were ‘conviction politicians,’ neither of them were particularly interested in theory. They learned in their lives the lessons they were going to keep. Reagan was the son of a shoe salesman, and Thatcher was the daughter of a corner shop-keeper. The experience of their parents was both very important. Thatcher and her sister lived in an attic. There was an outside toilet.” Wapshott noted that Reagan was—to many people’s surprise— a Democrat until the early 1950’s. He said, “He was also a trade unionist, which surprised many people. He saw his father trying to find jobs in the New Deal. Both Thatcher and Reagan have been brought up as Christians. Jack Reagan was a Catholic and was baptized as a Catholic. His mother wasn’t a Catholic. She was a Methodist. Both lived in communities linked to the Church. The foundation of Christianity left both of them sort of in ambiguity. They became great churchgoers. Thatcher switched out of Methodism into Anglican Church.”

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God, how I miss these two.