Word: enthusiasm
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Judging from interviews with many people who knew her in the U.S., where she lived from 1967 to 1982, and in Britain, where she spent the past two years, Svetlana was an often charming but restless, unhappy and quarrelsome woman. Her feverish enthusiasm for people and places could quickly turn into disappointment and recrimination, as evidenced by a trail of broken friendships and angry words. In retrospect, it seems clear that her ultimate quarrel was with her father, whom she fatefully resembled. As she once said about the Soviet people, Stalin's "shadow still stands over...
Even before the personnel shifts, there had been a curious sense of drift and lack of drive at the White House. Declared one former White House aide: "Since the election there has been no energy, no enthusiasm and no firm game plan." The staff changes would have been far less disruptive back in November, which is when Baker, Deaver and Nancy Reagan had urged the President to clean house. Instead of taking the initiative, however, Reagan characteristically let each aide...
Reagan's boyish enthusiasm is part of his public appeal, and that gee-whiz attitude begins at home. As the President told TIME in an interview, "When something unusual happens, or something important in my life, or something that I hear about, the first thing in my mind is, 'Wait till I tell Nancy!' It's that way between us." Even political decisions are cast in romantic terms. Of the period a year ago, when Reagan wanted her to go along with his desire to seek re-election, she says, "I guess he was wooing...
There is far more to the fascination with Reagan than personal esteem for the President, who, polls show, would have won by more than 3 to 2 had last November's election been held in France. The sentiment has sprouted from a relatively new bedrock enthusiasm for the U.S. and its values. Long notorious for their anti-Americanism, the prickly French have become more glowingly pro- American than at any other time since the early 1950s...
...that, there are definite limits to the enthusiasm for things American. Stepping up enforcement of laws dating back to 1966 that forbid the use of foreign phrases in advertisements, a special commissioner's office has been handing out fines of up to $700 to firms that fail to translate American words like hamburger (bifteck hache) and show biz (industrie du spectacle). Officials are busy coining replacements for such computer terms as hardware (materiel) and software (logiciel). While the language may be under assault, French pride--and what would France be without it?--remains / indestructible. "We find it hard to admit...