Word: bolls
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...aggressive way of (not) doing things, perfected by clerks of the U.S. Postal Service, has spread like a drug-resistant strain of civic anger. A real insecurity and confused apprehension that something has gone basically wrong mutate by stages into free-floating sullen grievance and ballistic self-pity, a boll-weevil mentality of busy stealth, the victim/employee/citizen as secret guerrilla. Alienation...
These are some of the plot elements of American leadership. The complex maturity of the national success brings with it, paradoxically, a diminution and dispersal. Hierarchies flatten out. Presidents of the U.S. and lesser leaders will be ground down, as the great families were. Scandals, like boll weevils (or special prosecutors), will chew into their administrations. Anyone's 15 minutes of fame is liable to end in a poofing flameout of indignity...
More important, Clinton has yet to form a stable coalition, as Reagan did with the so-called Boll Weevil Democrats. Quite the opposite: he prevailed on deficit reduction without a single Republican vote, and on NAFTA with more votes from the G.O.P. than from Democrats. Forming two totally different winning alliances is an impressive feat, but pasting together an ad hoc grouping on every issue is an exhausting and chancy task. Yet it is one that Clinton may well have to keep repeating...
...President?" The problem is undisciplined arrogance. As Clinton has threatened to withhold patronage from Democratic defectors and to campaign against Republican opponents, so did his model, Roosevelt. But F.D.R. wooed the G.O.P. assiduously -- "and so did Ronald Reagan," says a Clinton aide. "He made heroes of the Boll Weevils," conservative Democrats who delivered the margins of victory for Reagan's program. "All we've really done is wield the stick. That's why it was so easy for Bob Dole to roll us. Everyone likes to be stroked, and Congress, as an institution, demands respect. The irony is that schmoozing...
...gained national recognition during his 1981-1987 tenure at the House at the of Representatives, when he led the conservative Democrats, the Boll Weevils, in support of many of President Ronald Reagan's economic positions...