Word: confrontational
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Politicians don't give speeches like the one Barack Obama delivered this morning at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Certainly presidential candidates facing the biggest crisis of their campaigns don't. At moments like these - when circumstances force them to confront and try to defuse a problem that threatens to undermine their campaigns - politicians routinely seek to clarify, diminish and then dispose of the problem. They play down the conflict, whatever it is, then attempt to cut themselves off from it and move on, hoping the media and electorate will do the same. What they...
...debate about race was inevitable at some point. I would argue that race isn't just another issue; it is THE issue of American history. He actually needs to have the racial debate continue until it exhausts the media and the electorate as a whole. If he has to confront racial division in October in a major way, he will lose the election. By October, he needs to have the media and voters say, "We've already finished with this subject. What about Iraq? What about the economy...
...important for any presidential candidate to tackle "scandals" like these head on as opposed to running from them. If they do not confront them, the opponents will and it will quickly become much bigger than it would have been. In regard to White working class Pennsylvanians, I think they will react like all other voters around the country - those who already like Obama will say his speech was moving and inspirational, and those who have never liked him will say this is just another example of him using rhetoric with no action to back it up. As for the swing...
...even the most ardent skeptic or even atheist—to whom this tolerant regime agnostic to moral or religious questions might first seem appealing—must confront difficulty when this “tolerance” applies to sects not historically seeped in such cultural relativism...
authors who would rather confront this...