Word: formalism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Back in Chicago at week's end, he said he had brought back a P.L.O. communique for President Carter. Earlier, he had shrugged off suggestions that he was an agitator who might jeopardize complex formal negotiations. "If the agitator is that part of the washing machine that shakes out the dirt," he said, "that...
...made informally at unprepared meetings, the tendency to be obliging to the President and cooperative with one's colleagues may vitiate the articulation of real choices. This seemed to me a problem in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. On the other hand, if the procedures grow too formal, if the President is humble enough to subordinate his judgment to a bureaucratic consensus-as happened under Eisenhower-the danger is that he will in practice be given only the choice between approving or disapproving a single recommended course. This may be relieved by occasional spasms of presidential self-will...
...Soviet Union without consulting his senior advisers. An Israeli ground operation could produce a Middle Eastern war. I called Sisco, who said he agreed with the President's decision. I next called Secretary of State William Rogers, who had serious reservations, especially in the absence of a formal Jordanian request for ground support. Defense Secretary Mel Laird was ambiguous; he wanted to consider the intelligence. At 7:10 a.m. I urged the President again to call a meeting of his senior advisers in view of the differences of opinion among them. He now reluctantly agreed...
...refused to go ahead. He did not negotiate; he simply read me the formal North Vietnamese position, publicly available for months. There was no point in continuing the meeting. Le Duc Tho was not even stalling; he was laying down terms. As I got up to leave, Le Duc Tho took me aside and said in the tone of a fellow conspirator that his side's prospects were "good...
Most Soviet diplomats certainly cling rigidly to formal positions, for they can never be accused of unnecessary compromise if they show no initiative...