Word: darman
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...incident spoke loudly of Darman, who already owned an impressive record in and out of government. He also possessed a huge appetite for more responsibility, a need to perform in the political circus' center ring and a perfectionist's burden of self-doubt. That Darman, after some detours, became George Bush's Budget Director last month shows a degree of adroit tenacity rare even among Washington's tribe of striving Type A's. He appears joyful in his new post, though his return to public service dumps him into a sticky triangular paradox. Alone among Reagan advisers, Darman lent...
...challenge fittingly complex for a state-of-the-art public official who, at 45, is working for his fifth President and has served in six Cabinet departments. Darman has been a policy adviser, a crisis manager, an editor of Bush and Reagan speeches, a campaign strategist and, above all, a negotiator of intricate deals. The one he found "most exciting," he says, occurred when, as a young Justice Department official, he helped broker Vice President Spiro Agnew's resignation. And the most significant? He names the 1986 economic-summit communique, improving policy coordination among the industrial democracies. Years hence...
...That Darman takes such pride in a pact unfamiliar to nearly all ordinary mortals -- rather than megadeals like the 1983 Social Security rescue or the 1986 tax-reform act -- shows still another of his several facets. He is a relentless future freak. In a town obsessed with the crisis du jour, he frequently peers at the far horizon and tosses off jeremiads about his sightings. Lately he has been preaching against the rampant impulse for instant gratification. Americans "need to reinstill in ourselves a sense of the importance of the future," he argues. No one argues back in principle...
...Darman the farsighted analyst has known for eight years about the urgent need for expensive repairs to the country's economic foundations. Darman the ace operative has sometimes papered over that need to serve his President's or his candidate's political purposes. He is widely suspected of secretly itching to impose a tax increase. After denying that vehemently -- though not altogether persuasively -- he produced an innovative budget plan that appears to reduce the deficit with negligible pain...
...internal conflict? Not on this score, Darman insists. He has described himself as "a long-term idealist and a short-term realist." Now, in an introspective moment, he adds, "That's the most important short thing I've ever said about myself." Realism, of course, often serves as a respectable disguise for political expedience. Eight years ago this month, he was the first White House insider to warn his colleagues that Reaganomics was flawed. He and Stockman later considered sabotaging Reagan's 1981 tax-reduction bill. Concessions to assorted special interests, necessary to overcome the Democrats' competing proposal, were becoming...