Word: harshest
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Clinton agonized over that third bill, but his eventual assent was made palatable because Republicans had softened their harshest demands. And that happened because Clinton's moves to the middle had retarded Dole's progress, thus causing G.O.P. members of Congress to think first about their own careers, which meant standing for re-election with a law that reformed (or at least changed) welfare, the one program among thousands that had come to symbolize everything wrong with paternalistic Big Government...
Clinton can thank the Republicans for initiating his recovery: they let him make off with their best idea, balancing the budget in seven years. By claiming that goal as his own, and fending off the harshest ideas--never mind that his most painful cuts wouldn't kick in until after he left town--Clinton emerged with the upper hand. The White House message factory, run by political consultant Dick Morris, a two-party switch-hitter, helped him turn that success into a full-blown strategy. Suddenly, the Big Government, health-care blunderer had seized the political center, setting up shop...
Major television networks finally pulled the harshest spots, while ABC went so far as to ban pharmaceutical commercials containing charges against rival drug companies. The networks feared people might become too confused by the back-and-forth exchanges and therefore ignore and-fourth exchanges and therefore ignore not only the charges leveled at the two drugs but also the important restrictions actually printed on the bottle. Other painkiller manufacturers fretted that the public might decrease consumption of all painkillers because they were so confused about painkiller restrictions...
Shapiro reserves his harshest criticism for his colleagues, however. In classic Shapiro-speak, the author notes that F. Lee Bailey's "reputation for hard drinking was still alive and well," then describes Bailey rambling one night after a few drinks. He continues to suggest that Bailey was the defense-team sieve, responsible for leaking stories to the New York Daily News and Simpson's original police interview to the tabloid Star, an interview in which, according to the Darden book, a disoriented Simpson was unable to explain his cut hand and unwilling to take a lie detector test...
...companies decrying the side effects of each other's products. You know, the ones in which a very serious-looking actor "discovers" that Brand X just might possibly be more harmful than, say, swallowing drain cleaner. The confusing charges and countercharges prompted the major TV networks to pull the harshest spots; ABC went so far as to ban all drug commercials that take potshots at rival remedies...