In response to Gary Oliver: The One Ronnie, Robert wrote:
Here are Margaret Thatcher’s views on President Reagan (The Downing Street Years, p.157):
‘It was easy for lesser men to underrate Ronald Reagan, as many of his opponents had done in the past. His style of work and decision-making was apparently detached and broad-brush
– very different from my own. This was in part the result of our two very different systems of government rather than differences of temperament. He laid down clear general directions for his Administration, and expected his subordinates to carry them out at the level of detail.‘These objectives were the recovery of the American economy through tax cuts, the revival of American power by means of a defence build-up, and the reassertion of American self-confidence. Ronald Reagan succeeded in attaining these objectives because he not only advocated them; in a sense, he embodied them. He was a buoyant, self-confident, good-natured American who had risen from poverty to the White House – the American Dream in action – and who was not shy about using American power or exercising American leadership in the Atlantic alliance. In addition to inspiring the American people he went on later to inspire the people behind the “Iron Curtain” by speaking honest words about the evil Empire that oppressed them.’
President Trump – apart from the ‘risen from poverty’ bit: he’s gone in the opposite direction and given up a comfortable life for the rough and tumble of politics – is clearly cut from the same cloth as President Reagan.
