Word: blunt
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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From the day three months later when Clinton and Reno first met and he offered her the job, their styles were, to put it politely, complementary. Where Clinton was twice shy, having been charred by his earlier nominations, Reno was blunt, irrepressible. White House officials tried to coach this daughter and sister of journalists on how to dodge reporters' questions gracefully. Abortion, for one, she was urged to avoid. "What the President of the United States told me as we started into the Rose Garden on February 11, 1993," she recalls, was, "Don't blow...
...America (last month he became engaged to Melinda French, 28, a midlevel executive in charge of Microsoft's desktop-publishing business). Though Gates is famous for his lack of pretension, his habit of flying in coach class and his easy accessibility, he can also be brash, imperious and brutally blunt. He has been known to publicly dress down his managers, and more than once has reduced fresh-out-of-college employees to near tears by berating their thoughtful presentations at staff meetings with such withering lines as, "That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard of in my life...
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros, who was a candidate for the seat before joining the Cabinet, offered a different spin. The race might have been much closer, said Cisneros, but "Krueger ran away from his President and his party." He added, "His campaign was almost a blunt rejection of the President. The President could not campaign where he was not invited and not welcome...
Eszterhas has been able to get away with being a defiant rebel because he delivers high-voltage scripts. He's become best known for his sharp, pulp- fiction sense and his ability to build dramatic confrontations out of blunt dialogue. He can also hammer out reams of pages within hours. On Flashdance, Simpson recalls, "he gave us a draft in two weeks, then did 11 more. He's a workhorse...
...insulting the pompous politicians on the Hill. By the Washington Post's count, she has met at least fifty times with members of Congress in both houses and both parties. With a mix of courtesy ("Yes, Congressman"), warmth (she hugged House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dan Rostenkowski) and blunt honesty (she warned legislators that sin taxes alone could not finance health care reform), she has generally won high marks and--more important--respect. While the president has made members of Congress feel isolated and ignored, his wife has catered to the fragile congressional egos by making legislators feel included...