Word: buttons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...campaign for the Presidency, Bush relied heavily on "hot button" issues--the pledge of allegiance and prison furloughs--that carry great emotional appeal, but bear little relevance to Presidential leadership. He avoided pushing specific policy proposals, save for a few trivial programs such as his college savings plan...
Bush insists that he presses the Horton hot button just to emphasize his supposed toughness on crime. But would he spend millions relating the Horton story to the public if it concerned a white man who raped a Black woman...
...devil special (being produced under the auspices of the entertainment division, not news). TV's new fascination with real-life crime, moreover, has the whiff of pandering. The correspondents on 60 Minutes have been called prosecutorial, but they at least come armed with sheaves of evidence. The hot-button journalists of The Reporters and other tabloid shows pursue their prey with little more than inflammatory narration and lurid "re- creations" of the crime. The appeal is to knee-jerk emotions, fears and fantasies of revenge...
...have been lost in those opening two minutes. George Bush strode onto the stage in Los Angeles determined to prove with an avuncular assortment of smiles, chuckles, winks and asides that he was the affable heir to Ronald Reagan. But even when Dukakis tried to compete in this smile-button sweepstakes, his eerie grin had the spontaneity of a Dale Carnegie student practicing before the mirror. Asked why he did not appear more "likable," Dukakis felt compelled to launch into a petty aside disputing Bush's earlier attacks on his stewardship of Massachusetts' pension funds. Finally, as if he heard...
...realm of presidential politics, the Massachusetts prison furlough program is a "hot button"--an emotionally stirring but largely irrelevant pseudo-issue that serves only to define a candidate's values...