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John O’Sullivan on Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, the war in Iraq, and his latest book.

John O’Sullivan is one of the most famous political commentators alive. Unlike many other pundits, he has considerable real world experience, and that experience has helped to shape his views. Specifically, he once was a special adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and also ran as a candidate for Parliament in 1970. He holds many posts such as Editor-at-Large for National Review, co-chairman and founder of the New Atlantic Initiative, columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times, and Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute. In the past, he has been Editor-in-Chief for United Press International, National Review, The National Interest, and Policy Review.

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BC: You have a new book out called The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World. The title refers to Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II. Can you explain its theme (although the title is fairly revealing)? Also, I was intrigued by the idea of their being middle managers who found their way to the top. What did you mean by this? Furthermore, how much of what they did has been undone by events of the last decade?

John O’Sullivan: My basic theme is that Reagan, Thatcher and the Pope between them brought about the fall of communism and the end of the Cold War. They undermined Soviet communism ideologically, blocked it strategically, and left it lagging in the race towards a modern information economy. But such strong and principled leaders would never have won power if the 1970s had not been such a terrible decade for the West. Grave crises are generally needed to persuade people to choose leaders associated with bold and risky policies. Remember Sir Humphrey in Yes, Prime Minister who when he wants to dissuade Jim Hacker from some course of action, always says suavely: “Very courageous of you, if I may say so, Prime Minister.” Well, with “stagflation” hobbling Western economies, the Soviet Union advancing from Afghanistan to Central America, and a mood of despair seeping even through the U.S., even the Sir Humphrey’s woke up to the need for genuine courage in their leaders.

Why did I describe my three heroes as “middle managers?” This was a reference to them as they were in 1970.  They were then on the fringes of power and looked unlikely to rise to the very top. They were held back by their strong and positive personalities: Thatcher was seen as too conservative, Reagan as too American (i.e., too optimistic), and the Pope as too Catholic, which meant too Polish, or maybe just Polish. Courage and principle did not seem necessary in 1970. By late 1970s, however, not only were the crises grave, they were also in line with what Reagan, Thatcher and Bishop Wojtyla had been saying. People turned naturally to them. So I suppose the gravity of those crises is something we should be grateful to Jimmy Carter for.

BC: As someone who knows Prime Minister Thatcher, what is her personality like? Did she deserve the nickname “Iron Lady” or was that just Soviet agitprop?

John O’Sullivan: Lady Thatcher is a warm, lively and combative personality. She likes a good argument and so she likes people who argue with her. She certainly deserved the title “The Iron Lady” (given to her by the Soviets) because she was firm and authoritative in the face of attack. She also had the administrative stamina to push through her labor and economic reforms not only against union opposition but also against the usual bureaucratic obstructionism in government. Because Blair lacks this stamina, his achievements will fall far short of hers on the day he leaves office. As a boss she was kind, thoughtful and considerate, especially to those lower down the pecking order. But she was also demanding and tough towards ministers and senior civil servants. Sometimes she took this too far — it’s generally agreed that she treated Geoffrey Howe badly because she misread his mild good-natured personality as a sign of weakness. She paid heavily for that error. In general, though, she is a very kind woman. She also has a strong domestic side. She used to cook supper for aides working late with her on speeches. I think of her as a combination of towering world-historical figure and ordinary British housewife — and equally good in both capacities.

BC: Despite Stalin’s sarcastic question about how many divisions the Pope had, Karol Wojtyla was a Pope in no need of an army. In the history of the papacy, how unusual was John Paul II’s moral authority along with his will to express it? How influential was he?

John O’Sullivan: He was very unusual. Pope John Paul II was probably the most influential Pope since the Reformation within the Christian world. And because the entire world is now united by the communications revolution, he wielded more influence than any Pope in history over the non-Christian world. This was recognized by Gorbachev in 1989 when he introduced his wife Raisa to John Paul by saying something like, “meet the most important spiritual authority in the world.” That was quite a come-down for the leader of the officially atheist state that only a few decades before had pretensions to replace Christianity throughout the world. It reflected the fact that John Paul had begun the defeat of communism in his 1979 pilgrimage to Poland. John Paul II established — and I think the present and future Popes will continue — the tradition that one important role for the papacy is to be a spokesman for religious liberty everywhere.

BC: Has the Left lost the battle over Ronald Reagan? It seems as if the American people now view him as being a great leader, which has allowed his reputation to climb out of the morass of partisan politics.

John O’Sullivan: Yes. The Left lost the battle of Reagan’s reputation to three forces: former Cold War enemies, including advisors to Gorbachev, who testified to Reagan’s strength and shrewdness; Reagan’s own earlier writings, published after he developed Alzheimers, that showed the clarity of his mind and his grasp of political issues; and the unavoidable reality that Reagan obtained arms reduction treaties, revived the U.S. economy, and won the Cold War. As his latest biographer, Richard Reeves, a political liberal, points out, it’s simply implausible that these achievements could have been the work of an “amiable dunce.” There’s increasing embarrassment in the media over their 1980s misreporting. As for the bias of Liberal academia — well, in the immortal words of Mick Jagger (about Marianne Faithful), they “don’t embarrass easy.”

BC: I absolutely love your contribution to physics and hope it is long remembered with the same reverence as the word, “thermodynamics.” The sad thing about O'Sullivan's First Law, which postulates that all organizations not right-wing will eventually become left-wing, is its eerie accuracy. Why does it prove so annoyingly predictive of organizational behavior? Is this principally due to conservatives being such poor evangelists for their beliefs? 

John O’Sullivan: I’m delighted you like ‘O’Sullivan’s Law.’ It does seem to have caught on, probably because new instances of it crop up