Word: babbitts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...farmers could freely sell or lease their water rights, profit motives would provide a powerful incentive for conservation. In Arizona, where such "water ranching" is widespread, farmers are drawing top dollar and, in the words of former Governor Bruce Babbitt, "retiring to beachfront condos in La Jolla ((Calif.)) to raise martinis instead of alfalfa." If water rights were widely traded, proponents say, cities and factories could assure their needs for posterity. Agriculture would still receive four-fifths of the West's water and would thrive, despite the increased costs...
Already, just the names prompt small chuckles of remembrance: Alexander Haig, Pat Robertson, Pete du Pont, Joseph Biden, Bruce Babbitt, Paul Simon. Has it really been just four months since Iowa anointed Richard Gephardt and Bob Dole as the favorites? Before Primary Season 1988 is carted off to the Smithsonian, it seems fitting to step back and ponder some lessons of the campaign that was. After all, as the Duchess instructed Alice in Wonderland, "Everything's got a moral, if only you can find...
...cares what banks fail in Yonkers, it is the upbeat message that conquers." Look what happened to the Cassandras with apocalyptic new ideas. Jack Kemp's earnest seminars on gold-bug economics went the way of Pete du Pont's Iowa lectures on the evils of farm subsidies. Bruce Babbitt's budgetary bravery proved that press puffery persuades few primary voters. Dick Gephardt's political stock soared only after he softened his overheated it's-midnight-in-A merica rhetoric...
...himself into Mr. Maladroit, it is easy to forget how his hyperaggressive debate posture put a crimp in all the wimp talk. Jackson's dominance of the Democratic debates helped him narrow his credibility gap as a serious contender. There were also casualties from these protracted trials by rhetoric: Babbitt, plagued by near palsied facial contortions, and Hart, who returned to the fray looking like the portrait of Dorian Gray...
...deceiving. Finally, a few words about the press, that media mob of 3,000 journalists who descended on Iowa like commandos hitting the beaches of Normandy. Certainly, when it came to influencing the results, the press proved to be a paper tiger. Despite his glowing clip file, Bruce Babbitt foundered in Iowa, while Bob Dole, the media's favorite Republican, was upended in New Hampshire -- and later had the temerity to blame the press in part for his defeat. Reporters were doomed to repeat as gospel political orthodoxies that were soon outpaced by events. Try these on for nostalgia...