Word: downplay
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...Klein tended to exaggerate Clinton's strengths and downplay her weaknesses. He even went so far as to declare that her new health-care plan is courageous and detailed. I'll go along with detailed. Indeed, it might be the best of those proposed. But courageous? Why hasn't she submitted such legislation since she became a Senator six years ago? The answer, as anyone but her most blindly loyal supporters ought to see, is that there would have been no political advantage in doing so. Now is the ideal time to present it to voters as a key part...
When Pat Robertson ran for the Republican nomination in 1988, he went out of his way to downplay his identity as a religious leader, emphasizing instead his television network and other business ventures. Nearly 20 years later, it is impossible to listen to Mike Huckabee without picking up on his background of 15 years as a pastor. Huckabee is fond of saying that he's a "conservative - I'm just not angry about it." His mood is usually that of a perpetually cheery youth pastor who just might grab a guitar and rock out with the praise band...
...It’s easy to downplay the significance of the floods that crippled the New York subway system this summer —unless, of course, that’s your commute coming under increasingly common threat of delay...
...from helping ease the tension, politicians have sought to exploit it. Mayor Ray Nagin has tended to downplay racial tension in his few public comments on the subject. But many blame him for exacerbating racial disharmony during his successful bid for reelection last year by alluding to unnamed power brokers who were seeking to prevent displaced black residents from returning and, most famously, in his vow that New Orleans would once again be a "chocolate city"; since Katrina, New Orleans' population of 450,000 has dropped to about 300,000, with African-Americans' share going from around 70% before...
...largely focused on the arrival of the medical workers and their reunion with families, eyes also turned towards Paris, where French president Nicolas Sarkozy was being credited with the biggest diplomatic coup yet in his already highly accomplished two months in office. Only Sarkozy, it seemed, sought to downplay his own role in the breakthrough to focus on more universal messages...