Word: jujitsu
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Actually, Bush has a long track record of Clintonian jujitsu. He took education--and a hoary liberal slogan--away from the Democrats with his "No Child Left Behind" act. The Department of Homeland Security was a Democratic idea, which he opposed, until he embraced it. If congressional Republicans can stop squabbling among themselves, Bush could well enter his re-election campaign having accomplished that most ancient and moldy of Democratic dreams, a new prescription-drug benefit for the elderly. His would be a fairly lousy benefit, but no one will notice because the program doesn't begin until...
...Crusader's friends on Capitol Hill, saying that elimination of the long-range artillery gun would endanger G.I.s. Not long after that, Rumsfeld's aides put out the word that the gun was dead and that White was finished. And then, in a truly inspired piece of bureaucratic jujitsu, Rumsfeld sent his Post-it note to White--and held a press conference in which he not only praised the Army boss but brought him before the cameras to confess the error of his ways. Asked if White was now falling in line, Rumsfeld flashed the grin that has made Pentagon...
Earnestness grows tiresome fast, however, and it is a strength of both the biographer and his subject that it is leavened with snapshots of Roosevelt’s extraordinary energy and curiosity. At various points in the narrative we are informed that Roosevelt was studying jujitsu, conducting ornithological surveys, reading unreal amounts of literature and nonfiction, steering submarines, publishing papers on natural history, setting the Guiness record for shaking hands and killing bears—all while in office. When he invited foreign emissaries for weekend jaunts, he advised them to wear clothes they didn’t care about...
Earnestness grows tiresome fast, however, and it is a strength of both the biographer and his subject that it is leavened with snapshots of Roosevelt’s extraordinary energy and curiosity. At various points in the narrative we are informed that Roosevelt was studying jujitsu, conducting ornithological surveys, reading unreal amounts of literature and nonfiction, steering submarines, publishing papers on natural history, setting the Guiness record for shaking hands and killing bears—all while in office. When he invited foreign emissaries for weekend jaunts, he advised them to wear clothes they didn’t care about...
Morris also has in Roosevelt, as he did not have in Reagan, a first-rate central character, whose style and substance foreshadowed the presidencies that would follow. His athletic vigor prefigured John F. Kennedy's. If anything, Roosevelt's White House jujitsu lessons make J.F.K.'s touch football look borderline effete. ("Muscular Christianity without the Christianity" is how somebody once described Teddy's manner.) His use of federal power against the massive industrial monopolies of his day opened the way to the decisive expansion of Washington under his younger relative, F.D.R. Though he came from old money, his inexhaustible democratic...