Word: clan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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From Bates College in Maine to the University of Virginia, the clan culled inspiration from the lives of students along the East Coast...
...allowing men to fight one another without all that messy killing. Sport was literally a lifesaving idea: I hit you, you hit me, and an impartial observer determines who wins. (This became known as boxing.) I insult you, you trip me and the rest of the clan decides who played dirty better. (This became known as politics...
...Which brings us to the Kennedys. Caroline, by far the most reticent of the clan, ostensibly took the stage to introduce her uncle. But she was also there as the only remaining heir to her father's triumphant victory. In a role that probably would have fallen to her brother if he were alive, Caroline stood, visibly nervous, reminding the gathered that "we are the New Frontier." This was not a battle cry, exactly; Caroline's soft-spoken temperament doesn't lend itself to barn-burning. But she touched on the issues the Democrats wanted to hear: gun control, abortion...
...foreign policy skills, there was a risk the son would suffer by comparison. And out in the electorate at large, there were still people who remembered something they didn't like about the Bush brand, who had actually voted against it, who had the impression that the whole clan lived in a rarefied world where no one knows the price of milk and recessions don't happen. The last thing Bush wanted was to convey any idea that this crown was his for the taking, something he had inherited like a life peerage or a seat on the board...
...fact that W. stands a chance of becoming the President with one of the thinnest resumes in a century is teaching the Bushes themselves a thing or two about how the game of politics can be played. George W. has relied heavily on the clan throughout his life, but he skipped basic training, wrote his own rules, and he has had enough experience rebelling against his family to understand why, in 1992, the country did too. The ways in which he is different from his dad may be as important a selling point as all that they have in common...