Word: begala
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Late on Election Day last week, the message magicians who had brilliantly guided Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign could hardly contain themselves. James Carville and Paul Begala predicted a "twofer": Governor Jim Florio, their horse in New Jersey, would coast to re-election, and politicians everywhere would learn the Big Lesson. "Florio shows you can do the hard things that have to be done ((like raising taxes)) and defeat an opponent who offers feel-good stuff ((like tax cuts))," Carville crowed...
Reality hit within hours. The race that would make the case for activist government was lost. Carville and Begala were almost too depressed to put their spin on things. "I couldn't look Florio in the eye last night," Carville began. "But," he added, pitching forward cheerfully, "today's the first time in a while that I read the business section before the front page." Sure enough, the "real stuff," as Carville called it, was encouraging: housing starts, manufacturing, productivity and construction spending were all up. Perhaps the man who had won the White House by promising to focus...
Clinton surely hopes the rest of the nation will too. White House adviser Paul Begala is working on a speech to be broadcast from the Oval Office this week. More than 20 senior officials have been installed in a "war room" in the Old Executive Office Building, where, aided by telephones, computers, faxes and printers, they are spreading the gospel of deficit reduction. Cabinet officers and senior officials were scheduled by war-room operatives for radio interviews and courtesy calls on lawmakers. The Democratic National Committee released a 30-second television ad that will run in four states -- Arizona, Nebraska...
...right, NAFTA, designed to dismantle virtually all trade barriers between the U.S., Canada and Mexico, could go into effect as planned on Jan. 1, 1994. But even as Kantor and his colleagues were negotiating, top White House political consultant Paul Begala was on Capitol Hill urging key Democrats to put off consideration of NAFTA until after they begin to debate the Clinton health-care package. That process could take months following the bill's planned introduction in late September. Such a delay could scuttle the trade accord...
...Begala and others in the White House argue that a "signature" program like health-care reform must take priority over the trade agreement. This thinking happens to mesh with arguments set forth in a letter sent to Clinton last week by 103 Democrats who oppose NAFTA. Clinton isn't ready to postpone NAFTA indefinitely, but he agrees with Begala that health care must come first. If delay is indeed the Administration's tactic of choice, it would explain why Bill Daley of Chicago, the President's leading candidate to shepherd NAFTA through Congress, told at least one key House member...