Word: gephardts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Twenty-six years later the young candidate again claims to be ready. At 46, Gephardt is a driven politician who has maneuvered from obscurity in Congress to the top rank of the 1988 Democratic pack. Serious and smiling, able and ambitious, he has long had his eye on the prize, rarely missing a chance to advance to the highest office in sight. He is, at his core, the student-body president who turned...
With three years of national campaigning under his belt, Gephardt is a practiced and polished performer, doggedly crisscrossing the country, prescribing tougher trade policies and heavier doses of education to bolster "human capacity" as cures for an ailing America. His stump speech is a stark sweet-and-sour concoction that warns audiences of inevitable economic decline because of surging foreign competition, yet promises a revitalized America. "I worry about an America where dreams don't come true," he tells Democrats in his earnest style. "Our country has sunk to a low, but we can make it great again...
...wave of economic anxiety that swept the country after the stock-market crash should have offered Gephardt a receptive audience for his message: he had staked his claim as the candidate most concerned about economic complacency and most alarmed about the nation's slow loss of its competitive edge. But though he remains among the top tier of Democrats, he has had trouble capitalizing on the crisis or convincing undecided voters that he has the heft to handle troubled times. Despite his lengthy legislative scorecard and his earnest doggedness both in Congress and on the campaign trail, he remains...
Soon after arriving in Evanston, Gephardt leaped from drama to campus politics. Known then as Rich, he wore trousers with razor-sharp creases, was a preciously good speaker and even knew how to pull cub reporters aside at student senate meetings to explain the complicated goings-on. Friends kidded the student-body president about combing his hair down over his forehead in the style of John Kennedy. A college sweetheart recalls that the constant comparisons had an effect on Gephardt. "It was hard to look that much like J.F.K. and not talk of the presidency," she says...
After law school at the University of Michigan, Gephardt joined an up-and- coming St. Louis law firm and married Jane Ann Byrnes, a manager at a shoe company whom he had dated at Northwestern. Immersing himself in the affairs of his old south-side neighborhood, where delivery of city services was the major issue, he rose from ward committeeman to the board of aldermen by 1971. With relentless energy and a flair for press coverage, Gephardt helped residents keep grocery stores and hospitals in the neighborhood and massage parlors out. He developed a quick eye for compromise, harnessing reluctant...