Word: controllable
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...makes it difficult to achieve the cynically effective manipulation of TV coverage that was a hallmark of the Reagan Administration. Sununu and White House imagemeister Steve Studdert express disdain for the obsessive attention to television and press coverage under Reagan. But a former top Reagan official points out that "control of the evening news and the headlines is one of the few tools available" for a President who was elected without any specific mandate, whose political opposition controls both houses of Congress, and who has little federal money with which to buy votes...
Richard Neustadt, Harvard's eminent scholar on the presidency, raises a more disturbing point about this -- or any -- new Administration's public relations efforts. Neustadt, who believes the early criticism of Bush is unfair, wonders "whether the control of the electronic media that Ronald Reagan perfected now requires that the President become more passive and turn much of his schedule over to his media planners...
When the Tower nomination foundered, an inordinate share of the blame began falling on Sununu for his lack of Washington experience and his abrasive personality. Many of the Tower snafus, however, were beyond Sununu's control, as are most of the tensions in the structure of the Bush White House. Several Administration officials expect that this spring training crisis could even strengthen Sununu's hand as Bush realizes he needs someone to run stronger interference for him. Already Sununu has adopted the system used by Bush's vice-presidential chief of staff, in which subordinates are under strict orders...
Bush and his aides seem to be realizing that the presidency is too wide a stage to control by ad-hocracy. The trick will be to impose coherence without stifling the President's spontaneity. If the White House can do so, it should be able to recover quickly from the Tower disaster. Otherwise, barely halfway to his 100-day mark, America's 41st President may become hostage to outside events and forces...
...military's growing reliance on linked computer networks for battle management and command and control increases the danger of catastrophic sabotage by a hostile insider. That's why some U.S. security officials lie awake at night imagining scenarios like these...