Britain Looks Across the Atlantic

...With a touch of envy, the London Sunday Times declared: "President Reagan's real achievement...

...And Japan, despite its manufacturing and trading muscle, is clearly determined to maintain its low profile in foreign affairs...

...and abroadhave labeled him...

...Thus many here consider America, with its revived sense of assurance and inexplicable prosperity, the one source of hope on an otherwise gloomy planet...

...Those of us who ultimately depend on America for our freedom and security should be relieved that our most important ally has recovered its self-confidence...

...Americans, it would appear at the moment—think he is at worst a charming, cheery Mr...

...People here aren't sure whether to be caught up in the hoopla or repelled by the gaudiness of it all...

...Several of the participants noted the potential dangers of nuclear flippancy...

...When the Guardian, with its moderately Leftish preferences, reports that "Reagan rides the polls like a surfer secure on the crest of a wave," the public is prepared to accept epithets like "Woeful Walter" and "Frantic Fritz...

...It is undeniable, however, that a British leader glorified as President Reagan has been would soon be a laughingstock...

...Nevertheless, Jack Kemp, Jerry Falwell and the battalions of the Moral Majority have had little impact on the British imagination...

...Four more years!'" Yet even that voice of English liberalism, usually suspicious of Reagan, admits he is "about as far Right as Congress and the American people are willing to go" and will not have to pay much attention "to the extravagances of the [Republican] platform...

...While the editorial policies of the Times and the Sunday Times are said to be controlled by their respective editors, they have been far less critical of the United States since the Murdoch takeover...

...Few put much stock in a Republican claim that the Democratic Party has become so radical as to be America's version of the Labor Party, if only because it is hard to believe the Democrats could be so sharply divided...

...But in this vast, dislocated nation of strangers who ache for someone to bring them all together, it was potent and powerful propaganda...

...Indeed, during the long hot summer the dazzling spectacle of the Los Angeles Olympics, sandwiched between the clamorous razzmatazz of the political conventions, stretched this ambivalence to its limits...

...The Soviet Union is paralyzed by the apparently endless succession struggles in the Kremlin geriatric ward...

...To be a woman, for them, is not enough...

...Thatcher as someone to cherish, to be proud of, or to consider one of their own...

...the land of Pym and Hampden does not treat its rulers reverentially...

...Both publications are now owned by Australian press lord Rupert Murdoch, also the proprietor of the sensationalist New York Post, among other U.S...

...Europe's national economies have been smitten by a deep malaise that confounds Thatcher, France's Francois Mitterrand, West Germany's Helmut Kohl, and the rest, limiting their ability to influence international events...

...Some people here would actually be pleased and grateful if a Reagan-like figure—minus the gaffes, fumblings and tendency to lapse into bouts of embarrassingly syrupy sincerity—would emerge to lift Britain out of its protracted doldrums...

...Most inhabitants of these islands—like most Norman Gelb is The New Leader's London correspondent...

...Further calming anyone who might worry about Nevada's senior Senator and other ultracon-servatives are the optimistic media reminders that Reagan will not necessarily implement extremist policies if he is re-elected...

...It would be wrongto suppose, though, that Reagan is widely seen on this side of the Atlantic as the heartless, incompetent villain some of his critics in the U.S...

...At the same time, Britons continue asking themselves whether Reagan, should he be re-elected, will in fact be able to turn away from the rhetoric of belligerence and rise above his shallow understanding of global problems...

...He has, it proposed, "a remarkable opportunity to cut away from party obligations and lift policymaking to a higher plane: The opening to China made by President Nixon remains a model...

...After she got the nod, they did concede that it could be an important victory for women in the United States...

...they all labor in the shadow of Reagan's exploits, such as they are...

...others observed that Soviet leaders have occasionally indulged in loose talk without bringing on Armageddon, or meaning to...

...As for the Democrats, Britain has caught only brief glimpses of Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro, so it accepts the verdict relayed from the States: that the challengers' cause is a lost one and always has been...

...opinion, particularly as manifested in the Republican platform...

...Punch, forinstance, recently pictured the President standing atop the Great Wall of China, proclaiming, "Ich bin ein Berliner...

...His not-for-public-con-sumption joke about "outlawing Russia" and ordering that it be bombed stirred some controversy in the letters columns of the London Times, of course...

...has been to make the majority of Americans feel better, full of beans, and ready, whatever the scoffers and skeptics may say, to do their bit for the 'can-do' society...

...correspondent saw "something distasteful, almost sinister," at the GOP conclave: "Clean-cut youths in grey suits, white shirts and red bandanas lifted their arms straight in the air with salutes reminiscent of fascism, mindlessly chanting, 'Four more years...

...Frank Johnson, a humorist in the London Times, suggests "you might assume Laxalt to be one of those formidable purgatives endlessly advertised on American television...

...They wonder, too, if he can imbue the West with the renewed feeling of confidence and determination he is thought to have inspired in the U. S. That would be a real Hollywood finale, worthy of the characters played by Gary Cooper, James Stewart and Spencer Tracy—but never by Ronald Reagan...

...Magoo, fumbling at times but always ending up on his feet with a winning smile and a wave...

...Reports in the newspapers and magazines, as well as on television and radio, have minutely analyzed the Rightward swing of U.S...

...Still, there is an evident British desire to believe in Ronald Reagan and in the U.S...

...For a significant event at home to be shaped by the same extravagant spirit of fantasy would be unthinkable and unpardonable...

...One letter writer whimsically argued that the President had observed the proprieties by first making Russia illegal and only then ordering its destruction...

...But the fuss over Ferraro's financial disclosure has given rise to the impression that they may be equally suicidal...

...It remains true today, when the colossus across the ocean generates a mixture of wonder and disdain, admiration and disapproval, amusement and despair...

...After leading the nation to its greatest military victory, over Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill was immediately kicked out of office...

...That was true 21 decades ago, when the upstart American colonies, where so many of their young men had gone to seek fame and fortune, presumed to declare themselves independent and to conjure up a catalogue of inalienable rights...

...Thatcher has not been able to do the job, and none of her possible successors seems up to the task, either...

...An English journalist who witnessed Ronald Reagan's apotheosis at the Republican gathering in Dallas commented that if a British politician were treated with such veneration he would be "laughed to death...

...The daily Times went a step beyond that, exploring the possibility that Reagan may eventually turn out to be a major statesman...

...At the very least, the British are less easily swept off their feet than Americans tend to be...

...that seems to reflect the current vacuum in world leadership...

...publications...

...A strange assessment, considering that the person who made it is from a country where men and women can take the same train to work every day without exchanging a word on any subject except the weather...

...Putnam 'sSons...

...To be sure, the Guardian's U.S...

...His latest book, Less Than Glory: A Revisionist's View of the American Revolution, has just been published by G.P...

...Conditioned to Hollywood make-believe through incessant exposure—in movie houses, on television and now on video-cassette machines—they are having trouble adjusting to important real-life events that are coming to them almost identically packaged...

...Although Margaret Thatcher was able to use the "Falklands Factor" to gain a sizable majority of seats in Parliament, she won a mere plurality, not a majority, at the polls last year...

...But they do not automatically back those members of their sex who occupy or aspire to high office, and their coolness on this point starts at home: They have never regarded Mrs...

...Yet at a distance of several thousand miles the raucus, tawdry and weird ways of America look like great fun...

...Even before that mishap, Britain's feminists were much less impressed with her nomination than their American counterparts are...