Francis Phillips reviews The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister. Francis Phillips reviews The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister, By John O’Sullivan. The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister. It could be called “Ten Years that Shook the World”. The author is very well placed to write it, having covered the Reagan presidency as a Washington columnist, having been a special adviser to Margaret Thatcher and having written extensively on John Paul II. To this dramatic story he brings his own shrewd, informed political judgments. In contrast to the depressing accounts of wars and rumours of wars that we read daily in our newspapers, we are treated here to an alternative perspective. In the early 1. 97. Polish prelate, Karol Wojtyla; still less might they have considered ex- actor, ex- Governor Ronald Reagan of California as a future US President; and they would have dismissed the possibility of a little- known politician, Margaret Thatcher, becoming the first woman prime minister of the UK. Yet in 1. 97. 8 John Paul II was elected pope, in 1. Margaret Thatcher became prime minister and in 1. Reagan became president. All three vigorously opposed the pessimism surrounding them: “Be not afraid!” were the Holy Father’s opening words on the balcony of St Peter’s; Reagan had long stated, “my theory of the Cold War is that we win and they lose”; and Margaret Thatcher brought her own belief in traditional virtues, such as self- reliance, trustworthiness and initiative, and her equally strong views on economic liberty and patriotism to her role. O’Sullivan reflects on the attempts on the lives of all three leaders, suggesting that “it was the failure of assassination that may have altered history”. Everyone knows the drama of the Pope’s near- death; what is less known is the grave condition of Reagan after Hinckley’s shooting. Because of his courage in walking into hospital its gravity has been played down. Thatcher, too, only just escaped the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton during the Tory Party conference. Such attacks will focus the thoughts of serious- minded people. John Paul II and Reagan believed providence played its part; Margaret Thatcher, who lost close friends and colleagues in the bombing, wept later. The author also shows how the chemistry between individuals can have far- reaching consequences. He details the close friendship between Reagan and Thatcher, their warm, though differently expressed, relations with the Holy Father and the relationship of all three to Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet leader. The Pope was to describe him as “a providential man”; Thatcher, in her own somewhat regal fashion, announced after her December 1. Chequers, “I like Mr Gorbachev. We can do business together”; and Reagan, in his deceptively laconic style, remarked after the Geneva Conference of 1. I think I can work with this guy.” Today, with other urgent problems such as the Iraq war and Islamist terrorism, it is easy to forget the frigid reality of Communist imperialism, which haunted and dominated the post- war Western world. In June 1. 98. 2 Reagan had an historic meeting with John Paul II. Both men were at one in their view of the “evil empire” (Reagan’s words) and both men were committed to working to ensure the freedom of the captive peoples of that “empire”. Reagan commented that “we both felt a great mistake had been made at Yalta”. He knew that being publicly truthful about the reality of Communism would give hope and self- expression to countries behind the Iron Curtain. In her turn, Thatcher was regarded by ordinary eastern Europeans as a symbol of opposition to Communism. Once given a tumultuous welcome by the shipyard workers at Gdansk, the Iron Lady wept again. It is also easy to forget the extraordinary spectacle of the closing days of the Soviet empire, when one by one with reckless speed the countries of Eastern Europe defied their masters and chose democracy. On 1. 2 September 1. Poland established its first post- war democratic government; two months later the Berlin Wall came down; by spring 1. USSR had shrunk beyond recognition. Yet again, it is not widely grasped that Reagan, in the words of Charles Moore, former editor of The Daily Telegraph, was the “greatest nuclear disarmer who ever lived”. He believed that the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), on which nuclear deterrent theory was based, was immoral – even mad? He advocated and stuck to in the face of much opposition, a Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) which changed the whole nature of the nuclear debate. Not the least of this book’s strengths is the way it lightly shows how Left- wing, liberal theorists have been confounded in their estimates of all three protagonists. Reagan was dismissed as an “amiable dunce”; now he rivals the reputation of FDR and, to my mind, equals that of Lincoln. Margaret Thatcher, once described to me as “evil” by the wife of an Oxford professor and dismissed by the Mistress of my old Cambridge college as “not vulgar, just low”, is ranked alongside Churchill and seen as the greatest 2. The title “John Paul the Great” gives some sense of the historical importance of the late Holy Father. Again, the author employs a light but mocking touch to dismiss some petty players: “Environmentalists. In their individual ways John Paul, Reagan and Margaret Thatcher had the confidence to defend civilisation. I showed this book to a friend of impeccable, wishy- washy, liberal views. The President The Pope And The Prime Minister Pdf CreatorThe President The Pope And The Prime Minister Pdf Reader
The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister by John O'Sullivan, 360 Pages. The President the Pope and the Prime Minister. About Conservative Book Club. Get Instant Access to free Read PDF The President The Pope And The Prime Minister Three Who Changed The World at Our Ebooks Unlimited Database. 2/4 The President The Pope And The Prime Minister Three Who Changed The World. The President The Pope And The Prime Minister Three Who Changed The World. 3-09-2016 2/2 The President The Pope And The Prime Minister Three Who Changed The World. Other Files Available to Download
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