We must be thankful for strong leaders when they are most needed:
Some 16 years ago or so I was visiting with my family in the US. While there I asked my aging father if I might take just one of his photos back home with me that I found posted in his garage. He graciously agreed. It is a picture of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan walking together, deep in serious conversation one cool winter day at Camp David in 1986.
It is my all-time fav picture of the pair. It is such a moving picture of two great leaders. The entire free world owes so much to them (along with other champs who helped to end the Cold War, bring down the Berlin Wall, and end the dominance of the diabolical Soviet Communists).
I now have that photo proudly displayed near where I am writing this article. It encourages and stimulates me to keep going, even when it seems like things are getting increasingly dark and desperate. This pair has been an inspiration to me and to millions of others.
They had a long and robust relationship that many see as having been providentially established. Sure, both had their faults, and various areas can be criticised. But it can be argued that they were at the right place at the right time for so many reasons.
It seems they first met in July of 1972 when Reagan was Governor of California. In a visit to Europe on behalf of Richard Nixon he had lunch at No.10 Downing Street when Edward Heath was Prime Minister. Thatcher had come to power in the UK in 1979 while Ronald Reagan did so in the US in 1980. In November 1988 she was Reagan’s last foreign visitor to the White House, and they kept in regular contact afterwards.
Let me mention some of the things they had said about each other. First, President Reagan said this about her at a State Dinner in her honour on November 16, 1988:
When you were here 8 years ago, I first mentioned that despite all the troubles that beset us, we had every right to have hope in the future, to turn our gaze to the bright sunlit uplands of freedom. I suggested then that the totalitarian impulse had exhausted itself and that collectivism could well be at the terminal stage. Well, we’ve recently seen evidence that all of this may be coming about. Tonight we can hope this is so and that it will continue. We can hope that the altruism that has stood at the heart of the alliance of democratic nations in the postwar era will continue to bear fruit until the whole world is safe and free.
In this quest, those who love freedom have not had a better friend than our distinguished guest this evening. And so I hope, Prime Minister, it will not embarrass you if I take a moment now to record, for personal reasons and for the sake of history, our debt of gratitude to you.
Throughout my Presidency, Prime Minister Thatcher has shared with me the benefits of her experience and wisdom. The Prime Minister’s untiring support for NATO has encouraged other allies to make the difficult decisions necessary to keep the alliance strong. Her successful fight to unshackle the British economy from government intervention and to provide greater economic freedom has been a powerful example around the world. She is a leader with vision and the courage to stay the course until the battles are won. And on occasion, she has borne the added burden of heavy criticism incurred on America’s behalf.
I’ve been fortunate over these 8 years and for several years before that to enjoy such a close professional and personal rapport and a genuine friendship with Margaret Thatcher. Some of our predecessors were lucky enough to have had a similar partnership: Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. In each instance, both our nations have been enriched. At the same time, I believe we’ve added to the great stream of Anglo-American history and helped strengthen the tradition of a special relationship between the leaders of our two nations.
He concluded his address this way:
The Prime Minister was already well established in office when I began my first term almost 8 years ago. As I prepare to depart this office in January, I take considerable satisfaction in knowing that Margaret Thatcher will still reside at Number 10 Downing Street, and will be there to offer President Bush her friendship, cooperation, and advice.
She’s a world leader in every meaning of the word. And Nancy and I are proud to claim the Thatchers as our friends, just as America is proud to claim the United Kingdom as a friend and ally. Ladies and gentlemen, will you please stand to join me in expressing admiration and appreciation for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and in raising a toast to Her Majesty the Queen. https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/toasts-state-dinner-british-prime-minister-margaret-thatcher
And when Reagan died in June 2004, Thatcher was not in perfect health, so she delivered a taped eulogy at Washington’s National Cathedral before joining the Reagan family at his funeral at the Presidential Library in California. She began with these words:
We have lost a great president, a great American, and a great man, and I have lost a dear friend.
In his lifetime, Ronald Reagan was such a cheerful and invigorating presence that it was easy to forget what daunting historic tasks he set himself. He sought to mend America’s wounded spirit, to restore the strength of the free world, and to free the slaves of communism. These were causes hard to accomplish and heavy with risk, yet they were pursued with almost a lightness of spirit, for Ronald Reagan also embodied another great cause, what Arnold Bennett once called “the great cause of cheering us all up”. His policies had a freshness and optimism that won converts from every class and every nation, and ultimately, from the very heart of the “evil empire.”
Yet his humour often had a purpose beyond humour. In the terrible hours after the attempt on his life, his easy jokes gave reassurance to an anxious world. They were evidence that in the aftermath of terror and in the midst of hysteria one great heart at least remained sane and jocular. They were truly grace under pressure. And perhaps they signified grace of a deeper kind. Ronnie himself certainly believed that he had been given back his life for a purpose. As he told a priest after his recovery, “Whatever time I’ve got left now belongs to the big fella upstairs.” And surely, it is hard to deny that Ronald Reagan’s life was providential when we look at what he achieved in the eight years that followed.
Others prophesied the decline of the West. He inspired America and its allies with renewed faith in their mission of freedom. Others saw only limits to growth. He transformed a stagnant economy into an engine of opportunity. Others hoped, at best, for an uneasy cohabitation with the Soviet Union. He won the Cold War, not only without firing a shot, but also by inviting enemies out of their fortress and turning them into friends.
She went on to say this:
As Prime Minister, I worked closely with Ronald Reagan for eight of the most important years of all our lives. We talked regularly, both before and after his presidency, and I’ve had time and cause to reflect on what made him a great president.
Ronald Reagan knew his own mind. He had firm principles and, I believe, right ones. He expounded them clearly. He acted upon them decisively. When the world threw problems at the White House, he was not baffled or disorientated or overwhelmed. He knew almost instinctively what to do.
When his aides were preparing option papers for his decision, they were able to cut out entire rafts of proposals that they knew the old man would never wear. When his allies came under Soviet or domestic pressure, they could look confidently to Washington for firm leadership, and when his enemies tested American resolve, they soon discovered that his resolve was firm and unyielding.
Yet his ideas, so clear, were never simplistic. He saw the many sides of truth. Yes, he warned that the Soviet Union had an insatiable drive for military power and territorial expansion, but he also sensed that it was being eaten away by systemic failures impossible to reform. Yes, he did not shrink from denouncing Moscow’s evil empire, but he realized that a man of good will might nonetheless emerge from within its dark corridors.
So the president resisted Soviet expansion and pressed down on Soviet weakness at every point until the day came when communism began to collapse beneath the combined weight of those pressures and its own failures. And when a man of good will did emerge from the ruins, President Reagan stepped forward to shake his hand and to offer sincere cooperation.
And she concluded as follows:
With the lever of American patriotism, he lifted up the world. And so today, the world – in Prague, in Budapest, in Warsaw and Sofia, in Bucharest, in Kiev, and in Moscow itself, the world mourns the passing of the great liberator and echoes his prayer: God bless America.
Ronald Reagan’s life was rich not only in public achievement, but also in private happiness. Indeed, his public achievements were rooted in his private happiness. The great turning point of his life was his meeting and marriage with Nancy. On that, we have the plain testimony of a loving and grateful husband. “Nancy came along and saved my soul.”
We share her grief today, but we also share her pride and the grief and pride of Ronnie’s children. For the final years of his life, Ronnie’s mind was clouded by illness. That cloud has now lifted. He is himself again, more himself than at any time on this Earth, for we may be sure that the Big Fellow upstairs never forgets those who remember him. And as the last journey of this faithful pilgrim took him beyond the sunset, and as heaven’s morning broke, I like to think, in the words of Bunyan, that “all the trumpets sounded on the other side.”
We here still move in twilight, but we have one beacon to guide us that Ronald Reagan never had. We have his example. Let us give thanks today for a life that achieved so much for all of God’s children. https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document%2F110360
Two champions indeed. We sure can use more strong and principled leaders like this today.
