Word: babbittism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...loneliness of a long-shot runner involves a constant struggle to retain a sense of humanity. Day after day, town after town, Babbitt trudges on in an electoral blur, answering endless questions and shaking an uncountable number of hands. One recent night in New York City, his wife Hattie arrived and crept / into bed while he was asleep. He awoke before dawn to catch a plane to Pittsburgh. All they shared was a tap on the shoulder."Some mornings," Babbitt concedes, "you wake up and say, 'I can't take another day of this...
...Moines, Babbitt bypasses the Savery Hotel, the venerable political hot spot, and stays instead in the spartan Kirkwood, with its scuffed furniture and worn carpets. No luxury suites here. One night, when Hattie Babbitt settled into bed at the Kirkwood, she asked her husband, "Do I smell mildew?" But the odor was not the hotel linens. She laughed. "It was his T shirt...
With the failure of his campaign to catch fire, Babbitt remains trapped in the vicious vise of fund raising: meager popular support cuts donations to a trickle. These hard times call for unconventional tactics. Staffers are not above recycling empty soda cans and newspapers to pay for pens and pads at the Phoenix headquarters, tucked away in a shopping mall. Frequent-flyer miles are redeemed with gusto...
...pauper of 1988, Babbitt has little to lose, so he can risk everything. He is betting that his brutal honesty about cutting the federal deficit -- by raising taxes and slashing middle-class entitlements -- will garner attention. It is the only strategy he can afford...
...Babbitt's van races through Iowa under a steely sky, he gazes out the window and sighs. For a moment there is a lingering wistfulness, a remote sadness, for all the missed meals and family separations. But no one is forcing him to continue. In the end, there is only one reason why he made the painful decision to miss for the first time going trick-or-treating with his sons. There was the distant hope, still visible to him on the Iowa horizon, that he would have to miss Halloween only one more time -- next year, as he heads...