Word: insights
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...maverick tendencies and keen political insight, McCall was best known as a founder of the environmentalist movement. Even in his dying months, he campaigned vociferously for legislation to save the environment, leading a battle against a November ballot measure that would have ended the land use planning policies he created in Oregon...
...Nixon's latest attempt to explain away--and subsidize--his retirement years is not entirely without insight or interest. His paranoiac sliminess aside (a big aside). Nixon does evince some of the flashes of political acumen and pragmatic grasp of world affairs that surfaced from time to time during his shortened Administration. Thirty years of hobnobbing in the world's corridors of power have somewhat of a rubbing-off effect, as Nixon himself wouldn't hesitate to tell us: It sure beats some other forms of occupation, like acting for instance. But this is getting ahead of the game...
...analysis of reason for their success or failure. But the book rises and falls on the anecdotes Nixon tells about Churchill, Adenauer, Yoshida, et. al., This is a tactic that could--no, should--work; after all, where Nixon really can add to history, so to speak, is through piercing insight gained through personal encounters with the greats. But not-too-strangely enough, by the end of a given chapter on a leader, the numerous anecdotes weigh heavily. The purpose of Nixon's personal stories, it seems time after time, is not so much to illuminate these often mysterious characters...
...last of the great Nixonian themes and as good a summary as any of his rambling and superficial analysis. His ruminations on this point like much of the rest of the book, sound straight out of a fourth-grade civics textbook. "Great leaders excite great controversies. If one wants insight into how an individual thinks and feels as an adult, it makes common sense that his family background and early years will often provide a clue. "The successful leader must know when to light and when to retreat, when to be silent and when to compromise, when to speak...
...THOUGH LEADERS fails in its primary task of providing insight into many of the world's leading actors, it does give an engrossing glimpse into a fertile, though dangerous, mind. For observers of a President way out of touch with the complexities of his office and wallowing in stagnant ideology, Nixon's intellectual abilities and grasp of world politics sounds frighteningly refreshing--or at least provocative...