poliphilo | Whose Baby Are You?

Whose Baby Are You?

Do you know who was President/Prime Minister the year you were born- without looking it up? Apparently Matt Drudge doesn't. I was scornful until I tried to answer the question myself.

I guessed Eisenhower/Churchill. Wrong. I was a toddler when Eisenhower and Churchill came in. The answer is Truman/Attlee.

I'm pleasantly surprised. I idolise the post-war Labour Government (which gave us the Welfare State) and I don't like Churchill (whose post-war administration was the vanity project of a senile old man.) I'd far rather be a post-war Labour baby than a Churchill baby.

Yay- Attlee!

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As with driving, there's a sort of blind spot just behind you - too long ago to remember, too recent to be taught as history.

I didn't know this, either - the earliest Prime Minister I can remember is Macmillan, but by definition that's too late to be the answer to your question (like you, I'm Truman / Attlee, though Attlee only by a matter of months). I was born on the National Health, and always assumed I'd die on it...

That's exactly it- a blind spot.

I remember having a scrapbook into which I'd pasted a cartoon of Churchill, Stalin and Truman. I guess that's my earliest political memory.

I guessed Heath and Reagan, and it was Callaghan and Carter. I'd forgotten either of them even existed.

Callaghan and Carter- eminently forgettable, both of them.

We're probably very close to the same age then, I was born 1950 and Eisenhower didn't make it in till 1952.

I was born in January, '51.

Well, I know I'm Carter Kid--we used to theorize that our generation went to shit in 1980, when Reagan was elected. My guess would be Thatcher, but I don't know what year she started up.

*checks*

Yep, Thatcher baby here.

Words cannot express how much I hated Thatcher (and Reagan.) I thought I'd never feel that way again. And then along came the present two holders of those offices.

Eeeek. The presidential election took place around the time I was born, so I'm guessing either Patrick Hillary or Erskine Childers. Probably Childers. Prime Minister of the UK... erm... who came before Thatcher? Callaghan? And US president... Carter? Nixon? When the fuck was Watergate? I'm going with Carter. And now, I will check and get back to you.

OH MY GOD I was wrong on each one! It was Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh was president when I was born, and he only resigned the year after. Childers was long dead at that point. Apparently, Wilson was UK prime minister. And Gerald Ford was US president, not for long though. Who are these people? Why have I never heard of them?

In my defence, there was a lot of political turmoil in the seventies. But STILL. I am crap. Crap.

Well, no this is emerging as a pattern. And it's obvious really, how can you remember what was going on when you were a baby? And why should you?

Childers? Didn't he write Riddle of the Sands? Or is this someone else of the same name- a descendant maybe?

His son. The first Childers was executed shortly after the foundation of the republic for being in possession of a weapon (an ornamental pistol given to him by Michael Collins, as it happened.) The second one died of a heart attack while addressing a conference of doctors in 1974, and never wrote any novels, though apparently he was reasonably popular.

Is that why we shot Childers? I knew we shot him for something.

I've never read Riddle of the Sands. I believe it's a paean to King and Country. A bit like Buchan. How odd.

No, 'twas us shot him, if by "us" you mean "the British" and not "the reading public", in which case I am included in said "us". He was shot by a Free State firing squad, ostensibly for the possession of firearms, but more likely because he was suspected of being allied to the anti-Treaty Republican side in the Civil War. Also, of course, because he had made enemies. More here: this is an American site, but it seems reasonably well-informed.

And here was I bearing the guilt of his demise on my shoulders all these years.

Thanks for the link. I'd best go educate myself.

According to my research... because I cheat... your Prime Minister was Lord Attlee about whom I know very little, I'm sorry for that! I already knew that the president then was "Give 'em Hell* Harry Truman as he is my all time favorite president.

I know you think that he is forgettable but I loved Jimmy Carter, and I still do. He's a good man without being so damned PUSHY or a b****** who pretends to be perfect. ;-)

I just read a bit about Clement Attlee. It appears that he was a very good prime minister!

Unshowy, easily overlooked, even dull- but a man of great achievement.

I believe I like him!

My conscience smites me in regard to Jimmy Carter. Yes, he is a good man- and that's not something that can be said about many world leaders.

Attlee was a quiet, uncharismatic little man, but he presided over what I consider the greatest government of the 20th century.

If all the world leaders were like Jimmy Carter I believe that there would be no war... but we have to count Osama ben Lauden as a leader...
We would build houses for the needy and forgive crazy brothers!

The problem was that Jimmy is just too good for this mucky world of ours.

You are probably right there.

I just read that there were more explosions in London! THAT IS AWFUL!

You would think that since there are far more of us who are NOT terrorists that it would be possible for all of us to track them down and get them stopped...
Seems not.

As the picture becomes clearer it's looking as if this was an attack that went badly wrong (from the bombers' point of view.) The bombs didn't go off properly and the bombers will now be captured alive and interrogated- a terrific breakthrough for the police!

Oh well then.... YAY!!!
Lets hope that lots more of them become inept!

er... well, Reagan. Reagan was in almost until I was 7, I remember casting a ballot in the "election" at elementary school. I voted for Dukakis, and he was soundedly defeated by Bush. It's too bad; Dukakis was a good man.

and Thatcher? would Thatcher have been PM in 1982?

That's right- Thatcher was P.M. from 1979-1990. Gosh, but it seemed a long decade.

1982 was the year of the Falklands War- which fixed her image as "the iron lady" and sealed her close personal relationship with Reagan.

I made the same sort of mistake you did -- I thought it was Olof Palme, when in fact it was Tage Erlander. Palme is who I remember as a tot, but in fact Erlander would have been a better bet -- longest term as Prime Minister in the history of Sweden.

I remember the shock of Palme's assassination.

I see Erlander was prime minister for over 20 years. Wow!

Typical Ammurican. I know it was Truman -- I was born in 1948 and I actually remember Election Night 1952, sitting on a hassock listening to the election results on the radio because there wasn't any TV in our area yet.

But I haven't got a clue who was Prime Minister in 1948. The first one whose name I recall from the news is MacMillan, although Churchill was always around as the grand but irascible old man.

*google*google*google* Oh, it's Atlee. Who the heck was Atlee? Oh, I'm soooo provincial...

Attlee was head of the Labour government that won the post-war election- for my money the best government of the century. He and his team more or less created the Welfare State, National Health Service etc.

I remember, as a girl in Kansas, listening to the Democratic and Republican conventions on television. I was so thrilled. I remember the wonderful keynote address of Bob Clement (the older one). I thought the entire process was thrilling.

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From my perspective- born in '51- the Reagan years seem like yesterday.

I know I was born days after Roosevelt (not Teddy!) died...I missed him entirely.

Oh, dear. I haven't a clue who was next.

Eisenhower? Then Truman?

That can't be right...

Truman. You and me- we're both Truman babes. I like Truman, if only for that placard he had on his desk- "The buck stops here."

The first official reporting I did as an eighth-grade journalism student was to write up a speech made in Lubbock, Texas by Harry Truman. My dad took me, and I remember writing notes, mostly about how he looked in his blue suit with his white hair. He had, as I recall, a rather small frame and was rather cold in his demeanor.

I don't remember his speech. I remember his blue suit. And I got an A on my writeup and a front page byline in the Atkins Junior High School Gazette.

I don't suppose Truman was a nice man, but there was something four-square and reassuring about him.

I don't think I've ever been that close to any comparably important figure.

I saw the old Bush once, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where I was an employee. We had to go through a metal detector, and I could hardly see the man through the thicket of people until one of my pals, a big hulk, actually lifted me up and I could see Bush's face for a couple of minutes.

Carter came through the Lab, too, and I joined other workers on the hillside where we waited for his entourage to come through. I saw for a brief moment the flash of his famous teeth and his hand waving.

When Vice President Gore came to the Laboratory, I was working in an office very near the auditorium where he was to speak (to the important people), and security people came in to check our entire room, but I didn't even try to see Gore. I was so not into Gore.

The only politicians I've rubbed shoulders with have been lowly specimens. When I was a vicar we used to get the local MP to open church jumble sales and the like.

And when I was working on the trains Gerald Kaufman- who has been a Government minister- grumbled to me (to me personally) about the quality of the service he was getting.

And how did you respond to Kaufman? Did he know you worked for the trains?

(What did you do on the trains?)

Inquiring minds must know...

I was working as a cleaner- so the fact that Mr Kaufman's train was running late had nothing to do with me.

As I remember I agreed with him and then hurried to get away.

Reagan and Thatcher. Yuk yuk yuk.

I didn't think it could get worse than those two soulmates- and then along came Bush and Blair.

Reagan, I beleive. '86. I gather that Thatcher was Prime Minister at the time, although I wouldn't have known if you hadn't said so. Even though my mother hates our current President Bush, she still thinks Reagan was our worst president.

I think Reagan was smarter than Bush. Also he had style. And it was hard to dislike him personally, whatever one thought of his policies.

Yeah, Thatcher was PM in '86. She was in power for the whole of the 80s.

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