Word: campaigners
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Amid such a global transformation, it is only natural for Americans to feel proud and perhaps even a trifle smug. After all, hotly contested democratic elections are as American as, well, campaign consultants, TV sound bites and 30-second spots. That, alas, is precisely the problem. For lost in the euphoria over this upsurge of freedom are some impolitic questions about America's own role in fostering free elections abroad. Democracy is indisputably good for the world, but are U.S.-style campaign techniques necessarily good for democracy? Should Americans feel elated if election campaigns from Manila to Moscow become...
These unfortunately are not abstract questions. For just as it was in 1940 when Franklin Roosevelt coined the phrase, the U.S. remains the world's "arsenal of democracy." But these days, rather than sending bundles and battleships to Britain, America is aggressively exporting political technology and campaign expertise. Whether it is bringing exit polls to the Soviet Union or the first negative spots to Argentine TV, Americans are there -- on the ramparts of freedom -- trying to turn the world into one vast Super Tuesday primary...
This is one high-tech arena where the Japanese and the West Europeans still cannot compete: America leads the world in the sophisticated techniques of manipulating voters in free elections. The "booming market abroad for U.S. campaign operatives" was the subject of a recent cover story in the political-industry trade journal Campaigns & Elections. As the magazine enthused, "State-of-the-art television commercials and computerized voter files are spreading rapidly to other countries. American research firms are conducting focus groups for politicians worldwide." Like old-time vaudeville acts playing the Orpheum circuit, most of the top consultants have popped...
There is not much the watching world can do to stop it. Bitterly stung by previous attempts to serve as a buffer among Lebanon's feuding militias, Europe and the U.S. steered clear of direct intervention, appealing instead for a campaign of international pressure to quiet the guns. The U.N. Security Council urged an immediate cease-fire. Pope John Paul II blamed Damascus for "genocide." But the pleas had little impact on a situation that is governed by passion and irrationality. Unless a cease-fire can be brokered quickly, Syria and its allies might risk an all out assault...
...Heinrich Himmler's police began to arrest 79,000 "unreliables." Schuschnigg was kept in a single room at police headquarters and assigned to cleaning toilets for 17 months, then shipped to Dachau. Jews were rounded up and made to get on their hands and knees and scrub away Schuschnigg campaign slogans...