Margaret Thatcher...and Barack Obama?

One of the books I'm reading now is "There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters" by Claire Berlinski.  It's a fascinating read for those who want to know more about Dame Thatcher and what she faced upon taking over the government of the UK in 1979.  To give you some perspective as to what that country looked like in 1979, here are a couple of quotes from the book:

  "...you couldn't send things by mail very easily"

  "...all the electricity went off in the hospital.  In the middle of giving birth...That kind of thing happened all the time.  Every day."  

  "...it took six months to get a telephone line..."

  "The top marginal tax rate at that time was 98%."

One major reason that the UK was so dysfunctional was the grip trade unions had on the economy.  In addition, much of the economy was owned by the government.  (At the beginning of her administration, 68% of British workers were under a collective bargaining agreement.  Now, it's 34%.)

Thatcher's policies were not initially successful.  In fact, much of Great Britain went up in flames (literally) during the first 2 years of her Prime Ministership.  But she stayed the course.  For an overview of what she did, this quote explains it very well:

"What we mean, in simpler terms, is this:  Thatcher took a sledgehammer to a dysfunctional semi-command economy, stepped back, and waited for the rubble to reassemble itself - sans government direction - in a more efficient configuration.  It took many years for the dust to settle, and the collateral damage was considerable.  But in the end, the restructured economy was, as she had predicted it would be, leaner and meaner."

British per capita income was 46% below that of West Germany and 41% below France's in 1979.  Now it is 6% higher than that of unified Germany, and 8% higher than that of France.  At the time the book was published Britain is Europe's fastest-growing economy, and the fourth-largest in the world.  

Even her successors in Labour governments have known better than to disrupt her policies of monetary control and supply-side reforms of the labor market.   A famous quote from Gordon Brown goes "...we're all Thatcherites now".

For me, these facts are fascinating enough.  But what really interests me is how one woman, with courage of her convictions, stared down a powerful, well-entrenched established order (including her own party), and kept the courage of those convictions when it looked like her policies had absolutely devastated the British economy.  Riots were widespread, unemployment was rampant and growing, and British manufacturing was imploding.  But she kept on.  

(An aside:  a group of 364 prominent economists signed an open letter to her in 1981 protesting her economic policies.  Almost immediately afterwards her reforms took hold and the long upward path began for the UK economy.  This led a later Finance minister to state in public that "...an economist is someone who knows 364 ways to make love to a woman, but doesn't happen to know any")

It's impossible to overstate the contributions of one visionary politician, in the right place and at the right time, to make her country, and the world, a better place.  

What I wonder is this:  is our next President going to be Margaret Thatcher (and take sledgehammers to the worst parts of our government and economy), or is he going to create a platform for one of his successors to do that?  I know which way I'd bet, but I'm hoping that he'll surprise us all.