This review appeared in the March 2007 issue of The
American Spectator.
The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who
Changed the World
By John O’Sullivan
(Regnery, 448 pages, $27.95)
OTHER WRITERS HAVE NOTED the timely emergence of an American
president, a Polish pope, and a British prime minister in the late
1970s and early 1980s and their critical role in leading the West
to a peaceful resolution of the Cold War. But it has remained for
the Anglo-American journalist and editor John O’Sullivan to write
the definitive history of how Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and
Margaret Thatcher worked together, openly and not so openly, to
bring about what most experts agreed was impossible — the swift
dissolution of the Soviet Union and Marxism-Leninism.
To write such a multi-faceted story, you would want a polymath:
an American familiar with Reagan’s special genius for combining
principle and pragmatism, a Brit who could explain how Thatcher
became the first woman prime minister in British history, and a
Roman Catholic who understood why the Soviets were so worried about
the impact of a Polish pope on their empire. You would seek someone
with a keen historical sense and a flair for biography — and the
ability to integrate smoothly the myriad accomplishments of three
major figures of our times. If this paragon also had a smooth,
accessible writing style, that would be a heaven-sent bonus. It
would be impossible, of course, to find someone who could do all of
the above-unless you could persuade John O’Sullivan to write
The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister, his first
but not I hope last book.
O’Sullivan begins his admirable study by making the arresting
point that the times seemed to have by-passed Reagan, Thatcher, and
Karol Wojtyla, who embodied such seemingly “fading” virtues as
faith, self-reliance, and patriotism. But the unexpected death of
the Italian John Paul I led to the election of the Polish John Paul
II in 1978; Jimmy Carter’s monumental ineptitude at home and abroad
prepared the way for a conservative alternative in Reagan in 1980;
and Britain’s accelerating economic decline coupled with a series
of often violent strikes in the winter of 1978-79 brought the
country to the edge of anarchy. Thatcher offered a strong purgative
— economic liberty, traditional Christian values, patriotism, and
a strong attachment to the United States and like-minded nations —
and in May 1979 was elected prime minister.
In the ensuing chapters, O’Sullivan deftly traces the
interactive careers of the three leaders. There were, for example,
the attempted assassinations: Reagan narrowly escaped death at the
hand of John Hinckley on March 30, 1981; John Paul II barely
survived an attempted assassination only 43 days later, on May 13.
Three years later, on October 12, 1984, Thatcher miraculously
escaped an IRA bomb intended to kill her unscathed (five people
died in the blast). Not widely understood at the time was that both
Reagan and John Paul II almost died from their wounds. Each,
according to O’Sullivan, had the same explanation for his survival:
“One hand fired and another hand guided the bullet.”
All three individuals were self-confident charismatic leaders
who achieved greatness through dedication and hard work. Each
believed that he had been created for a purpose. For Reagan it was
to hasten and bring about the collapse of Communism. For John Paul
II (at least in the political realm) it was his diplomatic
offensive for religious liberty behind the Iron Curtain, especially
in Poland. Thatcher was determined to transform “the sick old man
of Europe” (a familiar epithet for Britain) into a dynamic land of
enterprise and prosperity.
Although Reagan and John Paul II met more frequently than is
generally supposed (there were at least seven meetings, according
to informed estimates), it is the friendship between Reagan and
Thatcher that receives the author’s closest attention. Reagan was
one of the first Americans to call and congratulate Thatcher on her
being elected prime minister, and Thatcher was the first major
foreign leader to be invited to Washington in 1981 by the newly
elected Reagan. From the first, they hit it off personally and
politically. Both sought personal tax cuts to encourage enterprise,
believed that the best way to limit the size of government was to
control spending, fought inflation through monetary policy, and
were committed to reversing national decline.
For their part, Reagan and John Paul II believed that “Poland
was the key to the unraveling of the Soviet empire.” And so the
president and the pope cooperated, openly and not so openly, to
help keep the Solidarity trade union alive throughout the 1980s
until, as O’Sullivan writes, it won the first free elections in
Poland’s postwar history and became “the first free postwar
government amid the general collapse of the Soviet bloc.”
Meanwhile, Thatcher and Reagan worked closely together in the
early 1980s against the unilateral disarmament policies of the left
in Britain and on the European continent. As a counter to several
hundred Soviet SS-20s aimed at Western Europe, NATO proposed the
deployment of a similar number of American cruise and Pershing
missiles. There were massive demonstrations against deployment in
major European cities, but the West, led by Thatcher and Reagan,
stood firm. General elections were held in Britain, Holland,
Belgium, and Italy in the fall of 1983, and the peaceniks were
decisively defeated everywhere.
O’SULLIVAN’S SKILL AS A REPORTER comes to the fore in his
dramatic description of the several Reagan-Gorbachev summits, most
notably the one at Reykjavik. He goes to the heart of the fierce
debate over the Strategic Defense Initiative by explaining that
Reagan regarded SDI not as one facet of the nuclear deterrent but
as “the central element in a global system of nuclear arms
reduction.” In order to reduce stockpiles on both sides, Reagan
insisted, “missile defense would have to be available to all
nuclear powers.” Conservatives as well as liberals criticized the
president’s position — liberals because they were wedded to the
idea of Mutual Assured Destruction, conservatives because they were
convinced you could not “trust” the Communists with such
knowledge.
But Reagan pointed out that a system of agreed global defense
would protect everyone against what he called “some madman…
secretly set[ting] out to produce some [nuclear weapons] with the
idea of blackmailing the world.” Reagan’s argument, writes
O’Sullivan, foresaw scenarios like those we face today: “an Iranian
bomb, a nuclear device in the hands of al Qaeda, even the risk of
an accidental launch by a nuclear state.” Reagan, the author
insists, was no utopian dreamer: He sought not a flawless defensive
shield but a prudential “mix” of missile defense and nuclear
disarmament.
In summing up the individual and collective achievements of the
president, the pope, and the prime minister, O’Sullivan states that
Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot; revived the U.S.
economy, which went on to enjoy more than 20 years of consecutive
economic growth; restored the spirit of America; and established a
“new conservative dominance in American politics” based on small
government and low taxes.
John Paul II, besides helping bring down the Soviet empire,
bequeathed to Pope Benedict XVI a Catholic Church that was large,
growing fast (particularly in the Third World), and becoming more
orthodox. According to O’Sullivan, Thatcher’s reputation is higher
in the rest of the world than in Britain, but even in her native
land the Iron Lady’s policies that defeated inflation, restored
British industry, and helped win the Cold War are “almost
universally regarded as correct.” Still she bears the burden of the
vehement opposition and even hatred they aroused, especially among
the liberal intelligentsia.
In an elegant coda to his marvelous book, O’Sullivan writes that
it is “a spiritual element that best explains [Reagan, Thatcher,
and John Paul] and their achievements.” All three, he says, “taught
and embodied the virtue of hope…. In very different styles, all
were enthusiasts for liberty.” And they were confident they would
win.
Conceding that we face very different problems today than the
president, the pope, and the prime minister did, O’Sullivan argues
there is every reason to hope that we can overcome them. After all,
he writes, adapting what Lady Thatcher said in her eulogy of
President Reagan: “We have an advantage that they never had: We
have their example.”
