Word: buffooning
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...political strength is that he is a cross between an unscrupulous Bryan and a political Barnum, a realist as well as an exhibitionist. He is a buffoon by policy but in his own line he is as smart as a steel trap. He has conclusively demonstrated that in Louisiana by finding a hundred ingenious ways to turn the institutions of democracy into the tools of absolute dictatorship. He is a master of writing jokers into laws. In the U. S. Senate he has made himself in three short years a master of parliamentary tricks...
...rostrum of religion" in reference to Father Coughlin, or another "Pied-Piper (Huey Long) tootling on a penny whistle," all the while mixing his idioms in a grandiloquent style that is the despair of professional comedians. The newspapers also provide farcial tilts, with the highly electric crackles of the buffoon from Louisiana alternating with the heavy artillery of Senator Robinson. The wonder is that the professional comedians don't unionize in an attempt to preserve their interests and send a lobby to Congress...
Working on a variety of motives, the opposition everrede resistance by a vote of 44 to 43. McCarran and other disciples of Mr. Green, of the American Federation of Labor, fathered the measure, blinded by a dogmatic adherence to the one high-wage scale for all workers. The buffoon from Louisiana, too tolerantly dismissed as a fool, whipped wavering Senators into line, from a much-heralded desire to "do anything" to thwart the administration. Republicans, acting with usual partisan tactics, voted almost as a block for the amendment. The appalling fact is that none of the opposition cliques knows...
...Carnival is a season of buffoonery," explained earnest Staatsminister Esser. "The Nazi salute is too holy and sanctified to be given in carnival." Elsewhere in the Fatherland brownshirt stalwarts expressed the vehement opinion that nobody but a Bavarian buffoon would think of mincing about with hand over heart all during carnival...
...Rome was headed in a showier direction. His stoicism kept him fairly equable through bankruptcy, an accusation of treason, a near-drowning, when he was thrown into the River Rhone by Caligula's orders. In the sabbatanic orgies at the palace Claudius played well his appointed role of buffoon, bided his time. But when a conspiracy finally rid Rome of Caligula, only a threat of death from the Palace Guard made Claudius choose the unwanted post of Emperor. He comforted himself by thinking that now he could give public readings from his history, and people would have to come...