Meryl Streep doesn’t think President Barack Obama has a spine of steel like a certain British Prime Minister.
Then again, who could be a tough, decisive leader in these challenging times, Streep argues during a new interview with The Huffington Post.
Streep, all but guaranteed to pick up another Oscar nomination for her turn as Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady,” served up a lengthy excuse for Obama when asked what the president could learn from Thatcher’s political career:
It was a completely different world. The Huffington Post didn’t exist. [Today] you have to respond to the YouTube clip going over and over of the thing you said that morning … I think, in a way, that clarity was possible, that conviction politics were possible in a way that maybe they’re not. You’d hope to think they are.
I’ve heard people in government lament that cameras are everywhere because you can’t make those deals, you can’t as a conservative member of your district make a deal with somebody on the the liberal side because you’re dead. It’s photographed, it’s seen. We don’t get those Lyndon Johnson solutions anymore.
Streep has been bending over backwards to be fair to Thatcher during her many interviews tied to the release of “The Iron Lady,” which opens wide Jan. 13.