Thatcher pays tribute to ‘great American hero’

LONDON – He called her “the best man in England.” She once said he was “the second most important man in my life.”

Ronald Reagan was president for eight of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s 11 years in office. She was the first foreign leader to visit him after his inauguration in 1981, and their strong rapport helped transform the world.

“To have achieved so much against so many odds and with such humor and humanity made Ronald Reagan a truly great American hero,” Thatcher said Saturday.

Both were conviction politicians, united in certainty about their anti-communist, free-market views.

Reagan, Thatcher once wrote approvingly, “did not suffer from the dismal plague of doubts which has assailed so many politicians in our times and which has rendered them incapable of clear decisions.”

Their personal and political rapport helped their neo-conservative outlook triumph around the world during the 1980s as the Soviet Union crumbled.

In her memoir “The Downing Street Years,” Thatcher recalled their first meeting in 1975, when she was leader of the Opposition and he was governor of California. She was won over by Reagan’s “warmth, charm and complete lack of affectation — qualities which never altered in the years of leadership which lay ahead.”

“Above all, I knew that I was talking to someone who instinctively felt and thought as I did,” she added.