Word: johnson
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...elect politicians to protect our interests. On Monday evening, Nov. 2, London's flamboyant mayor Boris Johnson spontaneously extended that remit to include the bodily protection of a woman he spotted being threatened by teenage hoodlums, one of them wielding an iron bar. Their would-be victim, Franny Armstrong, director of the film The Age of Stupid and founder of the 10:10 campaign to persuade governments, organizations and individuals to cut carbon emissions 10% in 2010, actually cast her ballot for Johnson's rival, Ken Livingstone, in last year's election. But after Johnson's daring rescue, she told...
...from the first time that Johnson, speedily christened "Have-a-Go BoJo" by London's admiring tabloids, has won over political opponents. His 2008 victory relied not just on the Conservative Party's mobilization of support for their candidate in the city's leafy suburbs but also on traditional Labour supporters who overcame their antipathy to his party to vote for him. Armstrong resisted Johnson at the polls but has succumbed to the gallantry of her rescuer, who cycled after her attackers - a gang of girls - before returning to escort her safely to her front door. (See pictures of Boris...
...burly mayor is unlikely to have felt many qualms about confronting muggers. A former schoolmate, talking to Johnson's biographer, described his subject as an "absolute berserker" on Eton's rugby fields. Johnson's career, both in journalism and in politics, has been marked by a fearlessness that not infrequently borders on the suicidally reckless. He rarely keeps to agreed party lines, recently incurring the wrath of Conservative leader David Cameron by going dramatically off-message on the party's European Union policy last month, provoking a Cameron aide to send him a Mafia-style text message: "La vendetta...
...Unusually direct wiring between brain and mouth would be a liability for most politicians. Although this characteristic is forever getting BoJo into scrapes, it's all part of his broad appeal, suggesting a kind of wacky, jovial authenticity that plays well on television. Johnson is something of a star of the small screen, a veteran of game shows as well as serious news programs. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown disparaged Johnson in a recent interview with Piers Morgan in GQ, saying, "I don't think people want politicians to be some sort of subset of the entertainment business." Polls...
Somewhere, the ghost of Lyndon B. Johnson is smiling. Senator Olympia Snowe's lone Republican vote for health-care reform in the Senate Finance Committee didn't just advance an issue close to LBJ's heart--as President, the Texan signed Medicare into law--it was also a masterstroke in political leverage. And no one loved Senate politics more than he. Snowe's yea earned her--a member of a weakened minority, from the lovely but not very influential state of Maine--a voice in the small group hashing out the final version of the bill. In the Senate...