Not all Americans are grieving this week at the news of the death of their 40th president. For those to the left of the Democratic mainstream, the passing of the Gipper is no reason for sorrow. Indeed some of the people who have written about Reagan this week should quite frankly have waited until the man was buried before having their say.
In spite of this, it's fair to say that, as a whole, America feels a sense of loss at the moment. This feeling envelops those who voted for Reagan and those who did not, those who viewed him as a principled leader and those who saw him as a dangerous simpleton.
Americans are not the only ones mourning the demise of the Great Communicator. One notable non-American attendee at yesterday's service in the US Capitol was former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. She was closer to Reagan than any other foreign leader of the time. They were alike not just in their politics, but also in their sense of destiny and in their personal narratives of rising to the top from humble beginnings. As she stood by her old friend's coffin, looking visibly frail, I couldn't help but wonder how the British people will react when their leader of the 1980s shuffles off this mortal coil.
There won't be anything like this week's out-pouring of grief, that's for sure. To some in Britain, Thatcher remains a hero. These people will no doubt grieve her passing publicly. Meanwhile, some British leftists will be reaching for the champagne the moment they hear that the Iron Lady has popped her clogs. For all that I dislike the woman and her policies, I think this is the wrong reaction. Fundamentally, it's wrong to take pleasure in the death of another human being, no matter how singularly lacking in redeeming features they may have been.
The mass of the British public will, I suspect, fall somewhere in the middle; feeling no desire to toast the death of an old woman but also having no wish to line the funeral route either. Certainly I expect no great weeping and wailing in Thatcher's poll tax laboratory, otherwise known as Scotland. There will also, I believe, be very few hankies needed in places which were in pre-Thatcher days known as "pit villages" but which are now refered to as "former pit villages".
On the face of it, this dichotomy (assuming of course that my prediction proves correct) seems strange. After all, both Thatcher and Reagan were stridently conservative, both were extremely divisive and both were hate figures on the left. Yet one is currently being given a send-off from a country largely united in grief. The other will recieve no such thing.
But when you look a little deeper, this possible dichotomy is not mysterious at all. It stems from the difference in political systems on either side of the Atlantic. The US is one of the few democratic countries in the world which does not separate the roles of head of state and head of government.
In European countries there is a head of state (a president or monarch) who performs ceremonial duties, consents to the formation of governments and generally represents the state. Then there is a prime minister who is an explicitly political figure, the leader of the largest party, elected to fulfill certain promises.
In America though these two very different roles are performed by one person. Who am I kidding? By one man. The president has to be, at one and the same time, a political leader elected to do X, Y and Z and a symbol of all Americans, regardless of political opinions.
As a symbol of his country, the president is surrounded by pomp and circumstance which is lacking for European heads of government. No band strikes up when Bertie Ahern walks into the room. Even after leaving office, the mystique of the presidency is maintained. Men who haven't sat in the Oval Office for years are still addressed as "Mr. President". The Secret Service protects former presidents for life, a recogniton that the assassination of even a former president would be deeply traumatic for Ameicans.
Thus it is no great surprise that Reagan is mourned so widely and that Thatcher wil, in all probability, not be.