To the editor:

George Will suggests that Californians should elect Tom McClintock as governor, claiming he is made in Thatcher’s image.

Margaret Thatcher brought to Britain simultaneously both high inflation rates and the highest unemployment rates on record. Her government then massaged these figures to claim that these unemployed people were no longer unemployed even though they still hadn’t found work. She then stopped paying these people while they fruitlessly searched for work.

She also brought two successive recessions, the second of which helped spark a worldwide recession. Finally, having brought her people to their knees through record unemployment, no social welfare and high inflation, she then brought rioting and civil disobedience to the streets of Britain over her imposition of a highly resented new taxation system that favored the rich or landed.

Does California need a Thatcherite? I would not wish her or anyone like her on my worst enemy, far less the state of California.

Phil Deamer,

Lawrence