Word: discern
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There is an obvious reciprocity between public opinion and the decisions of its leaders. Before an official decides, he attempts to discern what the public wants; once a decision has been made, the climate of public opinion undergoes a subtle change...
...election-eve denunciation of Kennedy as "soft on Communism" by rabidly right-wing Governor Wesley Powell was denounced by Kennedy and sharply repudiated by Nixon. Its possible effects on the election were hard to discern. Some analysts claimed that the unprecedented turnout at the polls was a result; others saw the 2,196 Republican write-in votes for Kennedy as a protest against Powell. Nixon aides interpreted the Vice President's quick repudiation of Powell's reckless charge as a big help in dissociating their candidate from the right wing of the Republican Party. But when the results...
...busy as alchemists in their laboratories, U.S. economists last week gazed upon the bubbling statistics of U.S. business, tried to discern exactly what they meant. Before the Joint Congressional Economic Committee, four top economists forecast that business activity in 1960 will certainly meet-and perhaps exceed-the rosy predictions made in the President's Economic Report. George Cline Smith, chief economist of F. W. Dodge Corp., and Peter Henle, assistant research director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., agreed that Ike's forecasts of a national output of $510 billion in 1960 is right on the line. Martin R. Gainsbrugh...
Time magazine attributed the College's success to "the unpredictable luck of an especially impressive batch of aspiring seniors." It did discern a trend, however, and admitted that the record number of winners "also seemed to reflect the rising standards in the nation's applicant-besieged prestige colleges...
...French insistence on the atom bomb is, of course, based partly on considerations of prestige and of grandeur, but perhaps we can discern more mundane military reasoning involved. Once the French have put their name on the label, I surmise that de Gaulle will quietly "Europeanize" the bomb project, and bring in German technicians. The object of these efforts would be to increase the Continent's nuclear power to the point where it could annihilate the U.S.S.R. Then the block would have won its freedom both from fear of Russia, and from dependence on the United States for protection...