Word: bushed
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...front-page story in the New York Times last week pointed out that candidates opposing Bush seem intent on implying that he doesn't have wattage sufficient for the job. This is difficult to combat gracefully. By joking about his own temper, John McCain not only helped defuse the issue but also picked up some points for being self-deprecating. In the early Clinton years, Gore managed to seem less like a piece of chain-saw sculpture for a while by going on talk shows to make fun of his own woodenness. But if you're running for President, making...
...Republic pieces, by Jonathan Chait, argued that, partly because voters seem to be in a mood to prize personal authenticity over ideas, candidates see some advantage in presenting themselves as, if not flat-out stupid, at least aggressively nonintellectual. It's true that when Bush first got into the race he joked a bit about his academic shortcomings in college, and when his Yale transcript was printed in the New Yorker, the impact on his campaign seemed so negligible that I was moved to write a couplet that went, "Obliviously on he sails/With marks not quite as good as Quayle...
...Chait is right, "Definitely Not the Dumbest Guy in the Deke House" would be precisely the sort of slogan Bush's campaign should avoid. When reporters ask him questions designed to discover whether he really has read James Chace's biography of Dean Acheson, he shouldn't answer with some foreign-policy boilerplate from his stump speech. He should say, "Couldn't finish it. Too many long words...
...risky strategy, though. Acknowledging that he's not much at absorbing the intricacies of government policy might leave the impression that Bush is sort of like Ronald Reagan, but it could also leave the impression that he's sort of like Dan Quayle. It's too early, I think, for the G.O.P. to be pondering whether there'd be any electoral advantage in changing its name to the Know-Nothing Party...
Atrial fibrillation often resolves on its own. For someone in Bradley's condition, it usually turns out to be more a nuisance than a handicap. And it doesn't seem to interfere much with a high-pressure job. Just ask former President George Bush. During his term in office, he suffered from atrial fibrillation as a result of his thyroid problems...