Word: babbits
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...right job, but the wrong time."--Farmer Arizona Gov. Brace Babbit's response when Hole Champion, the chair of the Kennedy School's search committee for a new director of the Institute of Politics, discussed the post with him, according to Babbit's secretary...
...this guise Babbit eloquently pleaded for a more caring American government--pointing out the poignant irony of Chileans who care more about the franchise than Americans jaded by protected freedoms; of a Japanese economy that innovates better than the great original innovating, entrepreneurial power, of Paraguayans who recognize the centrality of human rights more than Americans did under Reagan. He used the success of America's principles in the world to show our own lapses. It was powerful rhetoric, if necessarily incomplete...
...Babbit's prime criticisms of President Bush (somehow that expression still sticks in the throat) was that he was traveling around the world, by-passing the problems in the U.S. of A. Thus Babbit also had to discuss domestic issues, not the world's acceptance of "American values...
...Babbit related his experience of standing in line with his young son at a shelter for the homeless. When they encountered a 12-year-old kid by himself, the son turned to Babbit in amazement. His basic ideals about his nation had been shattered. The solution for the father-son duo was to return to those basic ideas, in the form of the Lincoln Memorial, which Babbit explained in Stewartesque cadence, "isn't a memorial, it's a shrine." They read the Gettysburg Address together, and psychically restored by the words of a president who had lost many elections before...
...Babbit will be a crucial figure in waking America up from the years of wayward leadership. He will say things that need to be said--and I don't think that will cost him an election in the future. But for the troubles confronting America, we will need a new brand of idealism--a purpose able to unite a country never before so divided along issues of race and class. Such a solution would be so tied into today's problems that it would leave Mr. Smith, crumpled hat held off to his side, scratching his head in amazement...