Word: barbers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...miscalculation of one percentage point in the unemployment rate would throw off the House budget figures by more than $25 billion-a loss of $20 billion in revenues and an automatic increase of $5 bil lion to $7 billion in unemployment bene fits. Conceded New York Republican Congressman Barber Conable, a member of the Budget Committee: "There is a substantial aura of make-believe about our prognostications." After the House vote, the budget battle moved to the Senate, where Ernest Hollings of South Carolina has succeeded Edmund Muskie as chairman of the Bud get Committee. A staunch supporter of increased...
James David Barber, 49, a tall, soft-spoken Duke professor who likes to psychoanalyze Presidents, has now attempted a more ambitious task: putting the entire American electorate on the couch. In what has been a year of rather cautious punditing, he proposes a provocative new theory of cyclical moods to explain why Presidents get elected. Woe to the candidate who is out of phase with the cycle; no matter what he does, he doesn't stand a chance...
...much discussed book, The Presidential Character, published in 1972, Barber categorized Presidents according to whether they were active or passive and positive or negative toward their job. In his new book, The Pulse of Politics (Norton; $14.95), Barber divides presidential elections since 1900 into three phases: conflict, conscience and conciliation. First comes a tooth-and-claw struggle: a stand-pat William McKinley vs. fiery Populist William Jennings Bryan in 1900, or Richard Nixon vs. George Mc-Govern in 1972. Then all-out conflict gives way to a rivalry of conscience, lofty moralizing in place of mere politics: Woodrow Wilson...
...Barber knows how to start an argument. In an election of conscience, was Goldwater really any less combative than Truman in a year of conflict? Was Nixon the conciliator in 1968 all that different from Nixon the scrapper a mere four years later? Barber's categories are considerably too neat, but his basic point deserves attention: an election depends as much on the mood of the time as it does on the qualities of the successful candidate. Tom Dewey, Barber argues, came on too strong in 1944, when the public yearned for unity, but was too weak...
...value of Barber's theory is that it puts new emphasis on the importance of conciliation in politics. The author feels that the press is overly disposed to treat a campaign as a battle. "The story of politics as conflict has distorted and diverted presidential politics repeatedly," he asserts. His view: conflict makes the best story and if there is none, the press starts looking for it. Barber is especially unhappy with coverage of so-called gaffes. A case in point: Jimmy Carter's remark in 1976 about maintaining "ethnic purity" in neighborhoods. While inept and illadvised, Barber...