Word: instinctive
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Meanwhile, Back Home. In addition, incumbents could take advantage of the old saw that "all politics is local." "It's the self-preservation instinct at work," says political scientist Greg Thielemann of the University of Texas at Dallas. "Pork-barreling in our direction is O.K." Ironically, a general anti-Washington feeling can work to an incumbent's advantage. The more people distrust the yahoos in Congress, the more inclined they are to cling to "their guy" as their one defender against congressional tomfoolery...
...does Dick do it? For one thing, he brings an instinct for journalistic values to the task of selling ads. For years he has delighted in meeting regularly with TIME editors to learn about the stories after each week's magazine is published. Then he takes his sales pitch into the field. "Making a sales call with Dick is a little like a religious experience," says TIME U.S. advertising-sales manager Barry Briggs. "By the time he finishes his delivery, the congregation is on its feet...
...their endless struggle to please and appease special interests and large voter blocs, most of the 535 members of Congress have succeeded mainly in diminishing themselves. Their fundamental obligation to order the nation's finances has given way to the politician's primal instinct: inflict no pain; ruffle no feathers; get re-elected...
...budget-making process, usually about as gripping as watching weeds grow, into a demolition derby. They invited the middle class to divorce its interests from those of the rich and its sympathies from those of the poor. And they reinforced the suspicion that in a crisis, the first instinct of elected representatives is to plant a time bomb and run for cover...
...accompanying euphoria, the idea was born that having once again won the war to end all wars, the U.S. could finally lay down its burdens. Calls rang out for cutting the defense budget in half by the end of the decade. The New Yorker, with its unerring instinct for the politically trendy and the politically stupid, suggested (quoting Daniel Ellsberg) doing the 50% cut right now. In Congress the rush was on for wholesale American demobilization. A reporter, complaining at a Feb. 12 White House press conference about "out of sync" defense spending, asked the President, "Who's the enemy...