Is the Heroic Age of Conservatism Over?

A PARADOX HAS BEEN DEFINED as a fact standing on its head to attract attention. Mrs. Thatcher’s fall from power and the apparent decline in President Reagan’s reputation even as the ideas and policies associated with their names sweep all before them internationally may not be technical paradoxes; but they should alert us to the possibility that something inverted may be happening. A disproportion between reputation and achievement is not uncommon in politics; what is little short of unique is for a statesman’s reputation to fall short of his achievements.

Economic successes, diplomatic advances, electoral victories, mass ideological conversions (of whole nations as well as individuals), international triumphs on the historic scale of the defeat of Napoleon or the Turks— all of these marked the Reagan-Thatcher decade. President Reagan gave the U.S. the longest peacetime economic expansion in its history and defeated the Soviet Union in the cold war. Mrs. Thatcher transformed sclerotic semi-socialist Britain into a vigorous market economy and was the European leader most obdurate in resisting Soviet pressure. Both leaders restored failing national morale at home and inspired a revival of market economics abroad—respectively pioneering tax cuts and privatization around the world.

About the Author

John O’Sullivan

John O’Sullivan is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

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A PARADOX HAS BEEN DEFINED as a fact standing on its head to attract attention. Mrs. Thatcher’s fall from power and the apparent decline in President Reagan’s reputation even as the ideas and policies associated with their names sweep all before them internationally may not be technical paradoxes; but they should alert us to the possibility that something inverted may be happening. A disproportion between reputation and achievement is not uncommon in politics; what is little short of unique is for a statesman’s reputation to fall short of his achievements.

Economic successes, diplomatic advances, electoral victories, mass ideological conversions (of whole nations as well as individuals), international triumphs on the historic scale of the defeat of Napoleon or the Turks— all of these marked the Reagan-Thatcher decade. President Reagan gave the U.S. the longest peacetime economic expansion in its history and defeated the Soviet Union in the cold war. Mrs. Thatcher transformed sclerotic semi-socialist Britain into a vigorous market economy and was the European leader most obdurate in resisting Soviet pressure. Both leaders restored failing national morale at home and inspired a revival of market economics abroad—respectively pioneering tax cuts and privatization around the world.