Word: inertia
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Finally, last summer, Nitze took it upon himself to overcome the inertia of the American policymaking process (see box). He embarked on a secret exploratory mission with his Soviet counterpart, Yuli Kvitsinsky. The two men came up with a plan that might have broken the bargaining impasse. Nitze would have given up the Pershing II program altogether and had the U.S. deploy enough cruise missiles to offset a greatly reduced force of SS-20s in Europe The purely military rationale of the Pershing IIs had always been the object of debate and doubt. Their range would not permit them...
GOVERNMENT AGENCIES assigned a particular task often pursue it with a single-mindedness, an inertia, that precludes any kind of dissent. In his new book. The Cult of the Atom, Daniel Ford shows that this bureaucratic blindness is now here more apparent than in the case of the Atomic Energy Commission. Set up in 1946, the A.E.C. took on the task of overseeing and encouraging the development of the American nuclear power industry...
...budget plan showed, however, reality is a little more complicated. Not only do politicians rarely have a clear notion of the technical features of their own legislation, Grieder claims, but they also are usually powerless against the forces that distort and emasculate even the most comprehensive proposals--inertia, political horse-trading, special interest greed, and just plain human error. In such an "anarchic" milieu, Grieder says, grand conceptions about "the way the world works"--in Stockman's case, supply-side economics--fall by the wayside, and their beliefs lapse into cynical despair...
...economic crisis, which all parties agree is about to come to a head. It blends uncontrolled government spending with rising inflation and high unemployment. Complimenting other E.C. ministers on the steps their nations had taken to stabilize their economies, outgoing Treasury Minister Beniamino Andreatta deplored Italy's official inertia: "I believe our people also have that same courage [to favor stabilization], but our politicians, at least some of them, do not know how to read their feelings." It may take more courage than any of the parties are willing to show to translate those feelings into a disciplined economic...
...people. The next step is higher management." Minority journalists are not so sure. Les Payne, national editor of Long Island's Newsday and president of the National Association of Black Journalists, contends: "Some papers may be better than others, but we still have to break the pattern of inertia." -By William A. Henry III. Reported by Steven Holmes/Los Angeles and Don Winbush/Chicago