Thatcher: The herald of polarized politics
To the many accomplishments for which the late Margaret Thatcher is now rightly being celebrated, let us add one that is usually less remarked but no less remarkable: Her iron leadership style inaugurated the era of modern political polarization.
Critics called her Margaret Torture and “Thatcher, milk snatcher.” In The Washington Monthly in May 1988, Polly Toynbee asked, “Is Margaret Thatcher a Woman?” The singer-songwriter Elvis Costello perhaps summed it up best in Tramp the Dirt Down: “There’s one thing I
You either really loved her, or you called her ‘Thatcher, milk snatcher’
know. I’d like to live long enough to savor. That when they finally put you in the ground. I’ll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down.” It’s not one of his catchier nor more popular offerings, but it’s heartfelt. And it’s printable, unlike the lyrics from many a British punk rocker on the subject of Thatcher.
Of course, political hatred predates Thatcher’s rise. Nixon hatred had a pedigree dating to the 1950s. But few had any genuine affection for Richard Nixon. What distinguishes the modern era from the incivility of the past is its polarized character.
Thatcher was widely hated in the United Kingdom for retooling the economy, breaking the trade unions and going to war over the Falkland Islands. But she was also widely loved on the basis of the same facts. One side saw her as a destroyer of communities and families and a betrayer of the egalitarian premise of democracy. The other side celebrated her for her commitment to the revitalization of Britain at home and abroad. Beginning with Thatcher, the more your opponents hated you, the more your supporters loved you.
The lovers even have a name for what afflicts haters: “Derangement Syndrome” occurs when political opponents have become so passionate in their hatred that they lose their marbles. Thus we have had, variously, “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” and the follow-on outbreaks of the Obama, Palin and Hillary varieties. My research is still ongoing, but Jonathan Chait, writing in the New Republic in 2003 on why he hated George W. Bush, might have been the first case of what defenders of the 43rd president regarded as an outbreak of derangement among Democrats.
But surely the only reason that “Clinton Derangement Syndrome” typically refers to the former secretary of State, not her husband, is that the diagnosis was not codified until after Bill Clinton left office. That its symptoms were present among Republicans in the 1990s just as among Thatcher’s political opponents in the 1980s is not in doubt.
As the political parties of Thatcher’s U.K. and Ronald Reagan’s America were becoming ever more polarized, advancing technology democratized the public expression of opinion and presented ever more opportunity for political segregation in what we read and watch as well as those with whom we associate.
Thatcher appeared at the beginning of that wave and perhaps knew better than any how to use it in pursuit of her vision. The former prime minister brooked no uncertainty. “There is no alternative,” she liked to say, when, of course, there always was.
Thatcher was certain not only that her opponents would revile her, but also that her supporters would rally to her cause.
Our era of polarized politics is part of her legacy as well.