Word: bakshian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...ARAM BAKSHIAN, JR. is proud of the fact that the guy who tends bar at the National Press Club--the capitol's branch of Alcoholics Anonymous--knows what he drinks. For Bakshian, it's been a long trip up from copy boy at U.S. News and World Report to "White House insider." He lumbers across the lounge--grey herringbone, white shirt with maroon navy pencil-thin tie, grey flannels--a figure that any Young Republican could look up to. As he talks--fast, clipped tones that emerge from somewhere under his Groucho Marx mustache--Bakshian switches back and forth from...
...Bakshian spent two months writing. Late at night, a glass of port in one hand and his brain in the other, Bakshian looked out over the Potomac and composed his first book. The publisher asked him, he explains, to go out on a limb, to write a book handicapping the chances of the candidates in search of the Republican and Democratic presidential nominations. Bakshian sees his book as something that may educate the electorate and "help us explain how these people get into office." He stops to preach. "If people are that goddamned concerned, then they...
This is an uncomplicated book written by an uncomplicated man. Bakshian has taken the classic election metaphor--the candidates as horses, the journalist as oddsmaker--and stretched it, beaten it and pummelled it into submission. Throw aside the introduction and the conclusion--which is very easy to do--and you're left with a $12.95 list of the candidates and their chances for making it through the conventions alive...
...Bakshian's methods are simple; he labels his scoring system the "Seven Deadly Whims." He moves from candidate to candidate, judging each on the basis of (1) leadership, (2) communication, (3) organization, (4) war chest, (5) age/health, (6) marriage/family and (7) wildcard. A candidate's positions on the issues are not included, he says, because issues fit into the other categories. At the end of the book, the horses are given scores, the scores are tallied up to find the winners...
...Aram Bakshian Jr. has been a fellow at the Institute of Politics this semester. He has served as a speechwriter to Presidents Nixon and Ford and written on politics, history and the arts for publications including National Review, The New York Times, National Observer, and Newsday...