Word: gephardts
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...stood before a group of senior citizens in Des Moines, Iowa, recently, Richard Gephardt was reminded that their cheers were at best a halfhearted embrace. The House Democratic leader had come to Iowa to stump for congressional candidates and to rail against Newt Gingrich for attempting to slash Medicare spending. The Republicans had so bungled their mandate and had pushed such an extreme agenda, Gephardt said, that Democrats should be given another chance. Which made sense to Arlyn Hodson. "We'll see you in the Speaker's seat!" the 66-year-old retired postal worker and Air Force veteran shouted...
That's hardly a ringing endorsement, and as such, it sums up Gephardt's challenge if he has any chance of replacing Gingrich as Speaker: before the nation is willing to oust the Republicans, it will have to decide whether it can trust the Democrats again. So it falls to Gephardt to make the country believe two years in the wilderness have been enough, that his is a chastened party with the discipline to keep its liberal, profligate instincts in check. "We got the message," Gephardt insists. "If you can't learn from your mistakes, then you aren't worth...
Those words come from a man with a knack for adjusting his philosophy to fit the political circumstances of the moment. From the time he was elected student-body president at Northwestern University in 1961, on the highly pliable platform of "creative long-term leadership," Gephardt's ideology of choice has been pragmatism. Starting out as an antiabortion moderate who knocked off a union-backed incumbent to win his House seat in 1976, Gephardt evolved into a pro-choice liberal whom labor considers its most reliable friend in Congress. Not even his admirers are sure they know what...
...House. While Bill Clinton's double-digit lead over Bob Dole has remained relatively steady for months, polls indicating how Americans plan to vote in their local congressional races are in constant flux, with projections ranging from a narrow G.O.P. advantage to a 12-point Democratic blowout. Gephardt believes that if the Democrats can carry a lead half that size into November, they will gain the 20 seats they need to capture the majority. And the chances of that happening, say political analysts like Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution, are as high as fifty-fifty. Republicans are already sounding...
Unlike the man he would replace, no one would ever mistake Gephardt for a revolutionary. With his flat Midwestern accent, his crisp, cuffless blue suits and his wispy, ginger-colored hair, he comes across as exactly what he is: careful and deliberate, encouraging but rarely inspiring. Where Gingrich prefers to back his opponents up against a wall, Gephardt would rather subdue them at the negotiating table. His willingness to sit and listen for hours while others gripe and posture has earned him the nickname "Ironbutt," courtesy of his colleagues...