Word: acumen
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That night R. A. Butler faced his decision. He and his tearful wife Mollie returned to their suite at the ornate, Edwardian St. Ermin's Hotel. Some time between a Scotch nightcap and dawn, Politician Butler surveyed the situation with all his political acumen and concluded that he simply did not have sufficient support inside the party to carry through the rebellion. He also knew, as he told friends later, that either decision, to fight on or to quit, would be criticized, but he decided to give up rather than seriously damage the Tory Party...
These excuses did not appear to fool the Kennedy policy-makers, who seem to have developed sufficient acumen in Latin American affairs to recognize cynical bids for U.S. aid. But recognizing the cynicism of the military juntas is only a precondition to doing something about them. Although President Kennedy deplored the army takeovers at his press conference Wednesday, he did not say whether the United States had determined to help the people of the Dominican Republic bring these unpopular rulers down...
Harvard-educated Lowell Dillingham tempers acumen with whimsy. He insists on the color blue for almost everything, including his office telephones, carpets and draperies. He shuns Honolulu society, spends his free time at a 105,000-acre ranch where he raises and hunts game birds. One of his recent tasks has been to prop up the Dillingham image. Earnings have slumped because of a drop in construction contracts; Brother Ben Dillingham, 46, was defeated last fall in a race for the U.S. Senate; and Henry Kaiser, particularly, has been giving the Dillinghams some stiff new island competition. To such challenges...
...Klabins have built up their vast enterprises with equal measures of fierce family loyalty, business acumen, political sagacity and social awareness. They lived modestly, had their children educated in Europe, invested their earnings in new plants and won political favor by acquiring a reputation for public service. A grandson of an original Klabin, Horacio Lafer, 63, who is an active partner in the Klabin business enterprises today, has served as Brazil's Foreign Minister and Finance Minister, and amazed everyone in 1951 by balancing Brazil's budget...
...Like the editors of the magazine, who realize that "Perhaps the trouble is that Harvard performs its job too well," Mr. Pusey points to a serious failure in Harvard education: "It is not that you will not know enough; nor that you will have failed to gain sufficient intellectual acumen from attending Harvard. It is rather that at the end of your experience here you may believe too faintly and care less...