From a Q&A with Nicholas Wapshott, author of the new book Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: A Political Marriage.

Lopez: Do the Clintons remind you at all of Reagan and Thatcher? Wapshott: Not much. Though, now I come to think of it, Bill Clinton is the only politician in recent times who was able, like Reagan, to effortlessly charm anyone he met. I have been in audiences of blue rinsed self proclaimed Clinton-hating Republican women who have drooled when Clinton-entered the room. I have heard lifelong Democrats say the same about Reagan. And Hillary is similar in some respects to Margaret Thatcher, in as much as Thatcher prided herself on being dubbed “The Iron Lady” by the Soviet leadership and Hillary is undoubtedly steely, as anyone who has met her but does not know her well will attest. But in her close circle, Hillary is, apparently, as charming as Thatcher can be when relaxed among friends. Thatcher was always a man’s woman, by which I mean that she was quite happy to use her feminine wiles to charm men into doing what she wanted. I have been at the receiving end of her charm myself and it is devastating. I felt like Benjamin in The Graduate attracting the attention of Mrs. Robinson. Hillary, however, is a woman’s woman. If you ask those who know her well you discover that while men find it difficult to like her, women bond with her very easily. So, now you come to mention it, the comparison with the Clintons tells us more than I might have imagined. It was a good question.