Word: devoid
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Congressmen are not devoid of humility, and some legislators recognize that if it were not for a few lucky breaks, they would be back home peddling insurance. One Democrat ridicules a colleague from an adjoining district as "scared of his shadow." The explanation: "He knows that he's at the pinnacle of his life, and if he ever lost this job, he could never live like this again...
This chameleon style may be a shrewd defense mechanism, designed to mask the harsh reality that Bush is more constrained than any other President in modern memory. The borrow-and-spend policies that Ronald Reagan presided over have bequeathed to his chosen successor a downsized presidency devoid of the resources to address long neglected domestic problems. The Bush campaign strategists -- with the candidate's active complicity -- burdened the new President with an obdurate stance on taxes. And for all of Bush's conciliatory zeal, Congress remains an enemy camp; no elected Republican President in this century has come into office...
...family encouraged him. He was a shy, insecure and aloof young man; if one did not know this from the testimony of his friends, one would gather it from his early self-portraits, with their veiled look of mannerist inwardness acquired from Pontormo. It seems he was unusually devoid of narcissism: unlike almost every other 19th century painter one has heard of, he gave up painting his own face at 31. It was the Other that fascinated him, all faces except...
Lilah at first sees her personal life as sacred and devoid of humor. But her earliest real success comes when Steven drags her into a spontaneous appearance at a club. Forced to go on without her prepared Polish jokes, she reaches into her own experiences and gets some real laughs. (Gazing dubiously at the gifts circulating at a bachelorette party in the audience, she quips, "I don't want to do anything intimate with anything that's got a 90-day warranty.") Later, at the Gas Station, her cracks about her own family and sex life bring down the house...
...margin for error, the danger of a gaffe, a mistake that will reveal too much, induces a crippling level of scripted caution. After the feel-good placebo of the Reagan years, neither Bush nor Dukakis dares to realistically ; address such pressing questions as the $2.8 trillion national debt. Devoid of content, the campaign almost inevitably becomes a technical exercise, akin to an overcoached Super Bowl with all plays taking place within the 40-yd. lines...