Word: carterized
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...took the oath of office on the Capitol steps in January 1981, the prospects were bleak for progress in either strategic or intermediate-range arms control. But Reagan had an opportunity to turn the situation around. Americans, allies and Soviet leaders alike were fed up with the dithering of Carter and were ready for some old-fashioned conservatism, tempered by common sense and self-confidence. Instead, Reagan made a bad situation worse with his rhetoric suggesting implacable hostility to the Soviet Union and his deep mistrust of the very idea of arms control...
...planners and political leaders have worried about the loss of superiority by the U.S., the achievement of parity by the Soviet Union, and the danger that unless the U.S. improves its defenses, the Soviets will pull ahead in the future. There were analysts in the back rooms of the Carter Pentagon and members of the National Security Council staff who feared that the future had already arrived...
...politician who had made peace with himself, except that it turned out not to be peace at all. Only two years later Mondale launched a campaign to convince himself and all Americans that he did not mean what he had said. He eagerly set out to become Jimmy Carter's Vice President, and made it. Now, in the early spring of 1983, he somehow had revived his presidential reputation. Here he was, leading all the Democratic candidates by a wide margin, and running ahead of Ronald Reagan too. He held the institutional center of the Democratic Party...
...even as he kept gathering support-and this is where the story of Walter Mondale takes on more haunting proportions-the old self-doubt kept creeping in. Telltale signs of the well-known Mondale shilly-shallying began showing up. He fumbled his relationship with his former boss, Jimmy Carter. And he warily navigated his way through the party's numerous interest blocs, careful to offend no one. Like his own captive party, he seemed more bound up in special interests than in national interests. Maybe, political observers said to themselves, he was right about himself the first time...
...Walter Mondale's laborious reconstruction of himself, the most important event was Carter's selection of him as Vice President. From that position he could speak with authority in all kinds of forums, and he did. By 1980, when he and Carter had lost, Mondale had pretty much decided to run, although he felt the need to test himself further. "The public can spot hesitation," he says, "and so can the people close to you." After a year of touring the country, the hesitation was still there. By the spring of 1982, it was apparent that Mondale...