Word: haig
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...retired four-star general has been an actor in some of the most important crises of the postwar era. On paper, he seems an ideal Chief Executive. Yet Haig has trouble being taken seriously. It is not just that his chances are so slim, that he has no political base, money or organization. Haig has a flaw that is far more fatal: he simply cannot gauge his effect on an audience. His campaign is based in part on proving that "I'm not the ogre people thought." But he is having a tough time doing...
Campaigning late one evening in an American Legion hall in Portsmouth, N.H., Haig made a point about the Persian Gulf, then slapped a veteran at the bar on the back and demanded, "Right?" The man mumbled his allegiance to Democrat Michael Dukakis. "You mean you're Greek?" Haig bellowed. Wagging a finger playfully, Haig continued, "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts." No answer. Haig walked away, then turned back. "I'll tell you something about Greek sailors," he said, adding a locker-room comment about the danger of turning one's back on them. Startled, the Dukakis supporter at last looked...
...boss Henry Kissinger labeled Haig "colossally self-confident." On the campaign trail, only Jesse Jackson has as much panache. Genial one moment, Haig can then lower his voice, narrow his eyes in what an aide once described as a "laser blue death ray" and deliver a bitter, blistering attack on George Bush. Often hailed as a hero, Haig also has a sinister mystique: while a deputy in the White House, he helped manage the secret wiretapping program ordered by Nixon and Kissinger, and he made regular trips to the FBI to read the transcripts. In Europe, where he performed masterfully...
...Haig's intensity and quicksilver mood shifts fueled a silly rumor that circulated when he was an angry and embattled Secretary of State. Haig, it was whispered, became mentally unstable after his 1980 double-bypass operation. Haig still pins the story on his old nemesis Richard Allen, Reagan's first National Security Adviser, who, Haig claims, kept a report on the psychological effects of bypass surgery in his White House office. Haig, laughing mirthlessly, says Allen even showed it to Nixon, who rang Haig for an explanation...
...nothing else, the 1988 campaign gives Haig a chance to vindicate himself: he is not crazy, he is in control, and he feels he was right in his losing battle against his small-minded colleagues in the Reagan White House. Critics who accuse him of merely trying to boost future lecture fees are missing the point. Haig means it when he asserts that he would be a good President, tough and clear-minded on issues ranging from the deficit to arms control. His ideas are, in fact, sophisticated and sensible. Haig knows his chances are dim. He blames the system...