Word: bushing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...1960s and '70s to induce a sense of complacency. A new generation of college-educated women, having never witnessed a female Phi Beta Kappa being told to make the coffee, considered radical feminism as outdated as Gloria Steinem's aviator glasses. By the presidential campaign of 1988, George Bush could flirt with the idea of recriminalizing abortion, knowing the women's movement was not strong enough to retaliate at the polls...
...hostage scenario has become numbingly familiar. The sadistic videotapes of frightened captives, followed by threats of execution. The White House dispatching naval fleets or listening for some faint reply down a clogged diplomatic channel to the Middle East. Last week it was George Bush's turn to try urgent appeals and gunboat maneuvers while an angry public fulminated at American impotence. Just six months in office, Bush had become the third U.S. President in a row caught in the same wretched predicament. The latest hostage crisis, however, yielded a gruesome new image of horror: a man, bound and gagged, dangling...
...same poles of military threat and diplomatic engagement that earlier Administrations had tried. Yet by week's end there was a tantalizing glimpse of flexibility: Iran's new President, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, offered to "help" find a solution to the hostage problem, thus raising the hope that Bush will not be boxed in by the implacable hostility of Iran as his predecessors were during the reign of the late Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini...
When Israel sought Washington's approval for Rabin's idea, Bush gave thinly veiled encouragement. On Monday, before the announcement of Higgins' killing, Secretary of State James Baker instructed the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, William Brown, to pass on the message that the U.S. would not "object" to the proposed swap. Though it was a pale green light at best, the Israelis recognized it as a sufficient O.K. But by the time the Israelis announced their offer, videotapes of Higgins' hanging body were already being distributed by Hizballah...
...first reports of Higgins' murder, the President cut short a Western- states speechmaking trip to return to Washington. He quickly conveyed his sorrow and outrage in a phone call to Higgins' wife Robin, a Marine public affairs officer. But throughout the week Bush was careful to apply a lesson that had been painfully learned by Jimmy Carter: never let a hostage crisis appear to consume the presidency. The President went to unusual lengths to create what might be called a mood of concerned normalcy, acting as host at a barbecue for members of Congress, playing tennis, even attending a ball...