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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JUNE 10, 1983
PAGE 9
Here is how the WALL STREET JOURNAL, in its June 10, 1983 issue treated Mrs.
Thatcher's victory in its lead editorial entitled "Leadership Pays":
Surely one clear message of Margaret Thatcher's victory yesterday
is that leadership�. In Mrs. Thatcher's first term as prime
minister, the polls often seemed to say that what she was doing
was politically risky.
The press wrung its hands over her harsh
image and pronounced her rigid. Many in her own party and even
within her own cabinet whispered that she was doomed to failure
if she didn't trim. She didn't. While never as doctrinaire as
her opponents liked to portray her, Margaret Thatcher stuck to
first principles--and won big.
There should be no particular surprise in this. Leadership is,
after all, what democracies E!Y their leaders for. It's an ob
vious but important point frequently missed by polls and pundits.
We do not E!Y leaders to construct policy according to the latest
Gallup Poll;� E!Y them to define our most important long-term
goals and find � ays to� toward them, which
,ey
definition�
qu i res leadership. If they do so, we reward them. If they don't,
we send them packing.
Like Mrs. Thatcher, Ronald Reagan often is painted as "inflex
ible" and "ideological"•... Many of Mr. Reagan's own handlers
worry about this image, and are constantly trying to get him to
offer up tokens of his "pragmatism" and "realism"--code words for
abandoning his principles and returning to the conventional wis
doms. Political handlers, pollsters and the press instinctively
dislike leadership.
It challenges the comfortably pred i ctable
world in which they operate; it carries risks; it ignores their
advice, freely given and usually worth exactly that.
But it can be argued that it was Mrs. Thatcher's opponents who in
the end proved most rigid and ideological. The Social Democrats
seemed stuck in the status quo, insisting that old formulas could
still be made to work. The Labor Party was even more deeply mired
in ideologies of the past: more spending, less defense, higher
taxes, more government controls, higher tariffs, fewer continen
tal entanglements. It was a Little England platform, a retreat
from the world--the very antithesis of leadership.
We aren't saying Mrs. Thatcher has all the answers...• But her
reelection shows she clearly has been asking the right questions,
the first requirement of real leadership. The economy ha� stag
nated: What are the requirements of growth? The welfare state
had gone too far: What adjustments are needed? Inflation, un
reasonable labor rules and lack of incentives for saving and in
vestment were making Britain uncompetitive in world markets: How
best can Britain's historic strength as a trading nation be re
stored? Britain's military strength had crumbled to the point
where a third-rate power like Argentina would dare take it on:
Was it not time to rethink Britain's spending priorities? •••
Leadership tries to confront reality and come to grips with it.
Heads of government and oppositions who ignore that often come to
grief: witness the shambles caused by Francois Mi�terrand's ro-