On Feb 7, 2008, at 12:47 PM, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> Correction - the transformation of society under
> Reagan administration. I think the real agents of
> that change were outside the realm of politics - the
> mobilized corporate interests, the wealthy, mobilized
> evangelicals etc. Reagan was merely what his nickname
> "great communicator" suggests - a spokesperson for
> those mobilized reactionary social forces. He did not
> cause the radical changes in the US society that you
> mention - he merely announced them.
Doing it, selling it, required no small skill. It's easy to disparage Reagan as an idiot, but he was, in his own way, as skilled a politician as Clinton (who left hardly a trace, unlike RR). Walter Wriston told Sidney Blumenthal that the corporate class was skeptical of Reagan at first, but then came around. Without Reagan, things probably would have been rather different.
And, as "Sir" Alan Walters told me at a conference back in 1994, Thatcher's most lasting achievement was probably the transformation of the Labour Party. Ditto RR and the Dems.
Doug