Word: characterizing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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In recent weeks Harvard has been treated to the spectacle of a "law" professor proclaiming that he would have trouble condemning someone who assassinated speakers whose political views the professor judged unacceptable. It is perhaps inevitable that academic freedom protects even this degree of zaniness, but it would be a...
Dirty tricks. Pungent character assessments. Expletives undeleted. Not far from the Iran-contra hearings, another portentous probe into White House misdoings came briefly back to life last week. Reason: the National Archives ) made public more than 250,000 pages of sensitive documents accumulated during the 1974 Watergate investigation of Richard...
Through this amorphous process, tentative tiers are likely to be established well before Labor Day. Jackson, by virtue of his name recognition and core support among blacks, will do well temporarily in the polls. But he will continue to be handicapped by strongly negative reactions in surveys, a weak organization...
The destruction of a public man holds a terrible fascination. One watches transfixed, yet ashamed, as personal dignity gives way to political desperation and hard-won respect is replaced by ribald laughter. It is an ugly spectacle, part Greek tragedy and part game-show television. Character becomes fate as hubris...
Increasingly, the press has come to take on the role of moral custodian of the political process. "Candidates used to be picked in smoke-filled rooms by their peers, who knew everything about their character," explains Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution. But this trial by cigar smoke died with...