Word: gergen
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...named George Bush announced his candidacy for the presidency in 1979, political adviser David Keene telephoned a Washington speechwriter with a desperate plea for help. "We need an announcement statement," Keene explained to Vic Gold. "So what's the problem?" Gold asked. "The problem," answered Keene, "is that David Gergen has been working on it for months...
...conversation helps explain why many Republicans were chortling last week at Clinton's decision to bring on David Richmond Gergen as his top spokesman, with the title of Counsellor to the President. While Gergen, 51, is regarded in Republican circles as an expert communicator and strategist, he is also known to be disorganized, undisciplined and often tardy -- characteristics he shares with his new boss. "If they are looking for a good analyst," said a Reagan White House veteran, "they have found one. But this is not someone who can make the trains run on time...
Nobody disputes Gergen's talents as a politician. Close associates say he is % "constantly pulse taking" -- measuring the attitudes of his co-workers, his allies and the country. Gergen's fans say this habit helps explain his ability to move easily in a wide circle of public figures, policymakers and journalists. His detractors say it has led him to switch alliances with alarming expedience...
...native of Durham, North Carolina, Gergen attended Yale University and Harvard Law School, and was a Democrat until his late 20s. He went to work as a speechwriter in Richard Nixon's White House in 1971, served as communications director to Gerald Ford and was what several Bush loyalists described as a "fair-weather friend" in 1980. As assistant to chief of staff James Baker in the Reagan White House, Gergen emerged as a skilled wordsmith and political strategist, helping design the 100-day plan for winning Reagan's revolutionary tax cuts. Gergen aggressively courted reporters and earned a reputation...
Even with Gergen, Clinton will still rely on a staff that has almost no White House or executive experience. Political director Rahm Emanuel, a campaign fund raiser, is unsuited as a party enforcer and is widely blamed for being too enamored of Hollywood for the President's good. White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum, a former Watergate committee staff lawyer who gave Hillary Rodham Clinton her first job, is seen by almost everyone in the White House as a political bumbler who has given his boss poor guidance on a host of matters from the nominations of Zoe Baird and Lani...