Word: barbering
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Carter has studied Barber's theories and pronounced them among the most important he has read; Ford's researchers have pawed through Barber's pages. Barber's text is used in dozens of major universities. He gets calls from broadcasters, reporters, politicians and even mothers-in-law who seek his expert assessments. Barber is deep into an academic study of this election and its participants, and he is pledged to restraint until it is over. Sometimes perched in an old-fashioned barbershop chair he has in his office, he turns away pleadings to rate...
...real presidential task is not dashing from shopping center to shopping center making the same speech," says Barber, explaining why it is healthy to view campaign rhetoric with skepticism. In those shopping centers, Lyndon Johnson promised to keep the U.S. out of the Viet Nam War and Nixon spouted all the American ideals that he systematically violated. A close look at their lives showed both men almost programmed by birth and background to do what they...
...Nixon gone into some other kind of work," muses Barber, "he probably would have done just fine." But the singular pressures of the presidency magnified Nixon's flaws (like his self-doubt). In contrast, John Kennedy's shortcomings were often obscured, his strengths (combativeness, style) enhanced by the office...
Ernest Hemingway's definition of courage-"grace under pressure"-is as good a yardstick as any for Americans to use as Ford and Carter march through this campaign, says Barber. But it will be up to each person to devise his own definition of both grace and pressure. A campaign is but the tip of the mountain, the debates just a small part of that. Yet, says Barber, the character clues will be there for us to see, even in the debates, though those constitute a mere 4/^-hour capsule of more than half a century of living...
...Barber does not scoff at any detail. He believes everything about a man is revealing-the veins in his forehead, his eyelids, his hands, his body language. This week Barber is pondering how inspiring, articulate, wordy, clever, devious, plain-spoken and hesitant each man emerged. Most important to Barber is how the substance of what Ford and Carter said relates to their pasts. What Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter promise for America is apt to evolve in some proportion to how firmly these ideas are rooted in their lives...