FIRST TERM>>REAGAN; SECOND TERM>>THATCHER:

Thatcherism - Stateside (Fraser Nelson, 12/19/04, The Scotsman)

After revolutionising America’s foreign policy, the Bush administration now intends to give domestic policy the same overhaul. They have a mission: radical welfare state reform. And they have a name for it: Thatcherism.

Ever since being returned with a 3.5 million-vote majority, Bush’s aides have been deciding how best to use the momentum. A president with more votes than any other in history has a duty to use such authority in a second term. There is also a feeling of discovery. The victory was on a record turnout: the American public is far more conservative than even Rove’s figures projected. After defeating liberalism, he needs a creed to bury it.

After a long ideological search, Rove has chosen Britain in the 1980s. Then Margaret Thatcher took on a left-wing consensus, and embarked on an epoch-defining war which the President now aspires to wage in the US.

Scotland on Sunday attended a rare White House briefing on this agenda, rich in language Bush is unlikely to repeat to Tony Blair. The White House’s stated mission is "to make this young century a conservative century" by example. Aides from the Thatcher government are being courted by Bush speechwriters. Rove, himself, has been pouring over her speeches and has distilled Thatcherism in a new label: ‘ownership society’.

To Bush, this is the theme for a huge project: privatising the welfare state which Franklin D Roosevelt designed in the Depression of the 1930s.

The important thing is how far down this road they thrust us in the first term, in particular by putting vouchers in NCLB and HSA's in the Medicare bill.

MORE:
Good Plan, Republicans. But It Didn't Work In Britain. (Jonathan Rauch, , Dec. 17, 2004, National Journal)

The idea of an "ownership society" is not new. In August of 1949, 23-year-old Margaret Roberts, out of Oxford and standing for office for the first time, addressed (according to a British newspaper) a "garden meeting of Young Conservatives at the home of Mr. J.E. Brittenden" in Orpington, Kent. "We Conservatives," said Margaret Thatcher, as she would later be known, "want power more widely diffused through private ownership, so that you never get more power in the hands of the government than you get in the hands of the people."

Republicans hope an ownership agenda will create a conservative majority. That was also Thatcher's plan.

Years later, she and her party acted upon her vision, and the economic results were good. But politically, things worked out badly. Very badly. The story has more than a little relevance for America's Republicans today. [...]

In 1976, soon after Thatcher attained the Conservative leadership, the party published a manifesto titled "The Right Approach." It called for giving the people "more power as citizens, as owners, and as consumers," by "lowering taxes when we can, by encouraging homeownership, by taking the first steps toward making this country a nation of worker-owners, by giving parents a greater say in the better education of their children." That should sound familiar. When it came to power in 1979, the Thatcher government made good on its word by selling off 1.7 million public-housing units, privatizing public industries, and creating tax and insurance incentives to encourage people to switch to "portable personal pensions."

The economy responded. Entrepreneurial energy began to pulse through Britain's sclerotic veins. Meanwhile, the Labor Party was reeling. It detested the Thatcher agenda but lacked new ideas and the will to break with its left-wing union base; it staggered from one weak leader to the next. The Labor Party appeared to be in terminal decline.

What the Tories then discovered is what ruling parties all too easily forget: There is no position more treacherous than having a parliamentary majority without a popular majority. With undivided power goes undivided credit, but also undivided blame. Worse, the possession of a parliamentary majority may embolden the party's extremists and lull the party away from the center, thus blocking, rather than advancing, progress toward a popular majority.

In Britain, the public liked the results of Thatcher's policies but never really bought into her ideology of self-reliance. Most people saw no need to choose between independence and government support. "Whatever works," was their view.

That, of course, is the key difference. The Tories, under Ms Thatcher, were never a conservative party, nevermind Britain a nation interested in self-reliance.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 19, 2004 8:56 AM