photo credit: Steve Punter

Nor, it would now seem, does the mere mention of “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie” elict the Pavlovian response “Out Out Out!”  The BBC’s sympathetic portrayal, and Gordon’s acceptance of the idea of not only a Downing Street portrait, but even a state funeral, seem to imply that after Harry Enfield’s Tory Boy, an election campaign based around Thatcher’s hair on Hague’s head and spontaneous celebration when she quit, it’s finally OK to be a bit soft on the Iron Lady.  Just when did it go out of fashion to hate Tories?

How has this happened?  Well, as Martin Kettle points out in his Guardian column, part of the explanation is that, unlike in 1999, we’re now on the precipice of a Conservative comeback.  David Cameron is poised to become the next Prime Minister, so, the media seem to be presuming, we’re all a bit nostalgic for the last era of Conservative hegemony, if not (as in the case of my generation) curious about what it was actually like.

There’s some danger in all this.  As Kettle points out, we may be on the verge of a Cameron premiership, but this does not mean that we’ve necessarily turned right:

 

Our era is not like that. This is not a conservative moment. If anything it is the reverse. The failures of 2009 are those of the banks and the absurdly over-rewarded bankers, not of the public services and their low-paid union members as in 1979. The failure of governance in 2009 is the failure of inadequate regulation – not of too much, as was the case in 1979. It is financial ungovernability that has brought the economy to its knees today, not union power. By rational standards this is a left of centre moment.

In the United States, that is exactly what is happening. Barack Obama’s speech to Congress this week, with its key insistence that America faces a day of reckoning, expresses all this with great potency. Britain is more problematically placed to take the same advantage because the country is governed by Labour ministers from a different era who had no alternative but to take Thatcher seriously and no realistic course other than to accommodate their party to her destruction of the pre-1979 order.

 

The Maggie-fest suffers another serious flaw.  It is about political power-plays, not about policy.  It is about personality, not about the people.  And, in turning the fall of Lady Thatcher into a Greek tragedy, as the BBC adaptation seems wont to do, and beatifying her even before her death, we risk casting aside in the collective consciousness many of the terrible consequences of her reign.  Let us never forget what 18 years of Conservative government did to Britain.  Let us never forget that society was torn apart, communities destroyed, inner-cities systematically sacrificed for new Beemers for city bankers and a war waged with the smiling face of jingoism and the unceasing background motivation of electoral politics.  And let’s not forget, in maligning those damned cowards who forced her out, that she went for three very clear reasons: an increasing tendency for autocracy; her ceaseless opposition to Europe which her peers saw as dangerous to the national and international interest; and the imposition of the Poll Tax, the most regressive tax in modern political history.

Yes, she’s defined our modern politics, in emulation and opposition.  Yes, her economic model transformed the country and the Labour Party.  Fine, we can have an honest debate about her legacy (but why we’re having it right now bewilders me), but let’s not allow the damage she did to become a mere footnote in history.  Britain today is a far better place than it was in 1997, after seven years of half-hearted Thatcherism which entrenched the damage of her eleven year premiership.  It’s been a hard fought battle to insist that there is, after all, a society.  In this new winter of discontent, we cannot allow Thatcher to become the standard-bearer for a new Conservative era.  We must fight, as Obama is doing under more favourable circumstances, to preserve what is fundamentally a social democratic moment.  I’ll leave you with Oona King, who gives a personal and emotional account of Margaret Thatcher’s influence on her own career, concluding, as all on the Left should, that whatever her achievements, she can never been forgiven.

And because I can’t resist, after you’ve flicked through the New Statesman’s “Where Were You When You Heard” article, why not savour in the dulcet tones of Michael Burke (and the incredibly authoritative titles of 1990s BBC News!):

“He’s so clearly a neglected 13-year-old that there’s something really kind of heartbreaking about him,” McKay said, calling him “a good-time Charlie” who was “just used his whole life to front questionable business endeavors, and in a way that’s what his presidency was.

“He doesn’t have Cheney’s cartoonish need for power and greed that’s so off the charts you don’t even understand how Cheney got that way. W. may have some awareness, deep down inside, sort of like a petulant teenager who just flunked the trig quiz and knows he screwed up. I think Cheney not only knows but is delighted with everything he did, as is Rumsfeld.”

It’s true that there may be some exoneration of President Bush by the media and public, certainly as Bush’s Presidency ran down the clock there appeared sympathy, from the press.  Why might this be the case and what impact, if any it will have on Bush’s legacy?

Above all,  Bush finally lost, not directly but the Republican brand was committed to two consecutive hammerings in the 2006 mid-terms and crucially in the 2008 Presidential campaign.  The themes of his presidency: the war on terror, free market capitalism, top heavy tax cuts, deregulation were strongly campaigned on by the McCainPalin ticket and their defeat is in no small part Bush’s defeat.

Consider also, the role of Sarah Palin, her dazzling entrance onto the scene was her making and undoing, her speech at the convention lit up the political race only to create a media frenzy that delighted in her demise as the glamour wore off and her deeply embarrassing lack of knowledge crippled any positive role she might have outside of Republican heartland. Take a closer look though and you’ll see the treatment of Palin was little different in themes from the 8 years under Bush, yet by comparison his (deliberate) withdrawn role in the campaigns, while the media delighted on a target was the period when the media and public got over him. He was consigned to history and despite being President, he seemed a passive even powerless force, creating a certain sense of sympathy. McKay highlights as much when he refers to the ‘13 year old’  Bush.

Despite his passive role, Bush did positively contribute to a minor upturn in the media portrayal of him.   He appeared reticent about his Presidency, noting he had some regrets, his final press conference indicated a mixture of bullishness over issues such as his response to Hurricane Katrina, but he also displayed reflective qualities, such as his failure on immigration reform.

Yet perhaps what is portraying Bush in a more positive light is the discord with Cheney’s own departure and here let me be blunt. Cheney’s terrifying hubris, with his ‘no regrets‘, shows a man  who never considered the responsibility he owed, to those he governed. By contrast, Bush’s regrets, underline a humility and appreciation of the responsibility of the President and an acknowledgement that where he failed, harm may have been caused. Dowd’s column, as with Ferrell’s play underlines this dichotomy, showing Cheney involved with a devil in a room full of pentagrams. The reference is clear, Cheney’s evil was the more insidious part of the Bush Presidency and this narrative is drawing fire from Bush himself.

To make the disconnect between Cheney and Bush concrete, and this is the salient point of Dowd’s article, Bush’s failure to pardon ‘Scooter’ Libby, his acknowledgement that justice was done apparently infuriated Cheney, and indications of a growing split between the two is referenced by Tom De Frank, a former White House Aid describing how towards the end Bush stopped running things past Cheney’s office.

From the electoral defeat, Sarah Palin to his humility and dichotomous ending with Cheney has served to give Bush a reprieve, but don’t be fooled into confusing the rhythms of media narratives with the realities of Bush’s historical legacy. The buck stopped with ‘dubya’. From the ‘war on terror’ the proliferation of lies over weapons of mass destruction, two potential quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, dampening and distortion of Science and perhaps most unforgivable, 8 years which ended in possibly the worst economic crisis since 1929. The last point, the heaviest, because if not the economy,  what did Bush leave America?

All of which, in the eyes of history, will loom unquestionably larger than the a media still not completely over the election, and if sympathy is the best he will get out of his upswing his legacy’s fate looks grim.  Because when all is said and don, the buck stops with the President not the Vice-President and history will judge accordingly.