Word: friendships
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Darden: "If everything was going fine otherwise, the reaction would just be 'It's his stupid brother,' but now Billy's image transfers to Jimmy." California Pollster Mervin Field felt that the Billy affair provides "a disturbing reminder" of the President's previous embarrassing friendship for wheeler-dealer Banker and White House Insider Bert Lance. "The Billy thing puts President Carter on the defensive," said Pollster Louis Harris. "He will not really be able to campaign in his favorite way with high moral dudgeon...
...attempted to obstruct justice or influence the Justice Department." Actually, there is as yet no solid evidence that the Libyans got anything from Billy Carter of value for their money or that his friendship in any way influenced U.S. policy toward Libya. In its most serious interpretation, the evidence suggests that Libya's Muammar Gaddafi might have skillfully got Billy into debt financially with the aim of gaining future benefits. In the most lenient interpretation, Billy had simply hoodwinked the Libyans into thinking he had more influence than he has-and happily taken the money and run without seeking...
...influence I don't have." In deed, the Libyans seem to have got little from the country slicker from Plains. But Billy was frank enough to admit in an ABC interview: "I would not have been invited to Libya if Jimmy wasn't President. They sought my friendship because I was the brother of the President." Legally, he can now operate as an agent for the Libyans, but he claims he has no plans...
...been behaving more or less as Americans say that they wish their friends to behave: with a glowing, stalwart independence. Ideally, friends may gain a truer understanding of each other when they agree less and diverge more, and ideally, mutual understanding is an aim of friendship. And so, ideally again, the U.S. should have thumped old France on the back it turned. Of course, ideals really have nothing to do with the relationship. The U.S. is sore as hell at France (the U.S. is usually sore as hell at France) because France insists on being itself. Not that being oneself...
...mulls over the relationship with its allies these days, it may be no more sure of what makes for good friendship than what makes for good government, of where kindliness becomes interference, assistance domination: these are the old familiar battle lines. For their part, the allies may be wondering if the U.S. understood friendship as a true partnership or merely as a kind of protectorate, the protector now petulant and moody after several open rebuffs. Friendship applied to countries is as slippery as that applied to individuals, and must be safeguarded in similar ways. Each side has to realize when...