Word: laird
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Last week Laird, who in public invariably gives the relaxed impression that his hair shirt must have a silk lining, was hard at work at his job while most of Washington was on holiday. Conforming to the President's marching orders for the attack on inflation and to the realities of congressional skepticism, he announced new military-budget cutbacks that will eventually amount to $3 billion. The measures were an artful melange of reductions already taken and some for the future, and he accompanied them with the warning that they would cause an "inevitable weakening of our worldwide military posture...
...Laird pleads guilty only to wanting a strong bargaining position: "If you give the Russians anything before the talks begin, then either the negotiations never start or they drag on for several years without accomplishing anything. The Soviet Union will wait to see how much they can get before they sit down." McNamara, when he argued for arms control and against certain weapons projects, often provided a counterweight to civilian militarism on Capitol Hill. Today the balance is tipped sharply so that opposition to the military, particularly in the Senate, threatens to go to the opposite extreme. While...
...Laird's specific reforms will work remains to be seen. If he seems to lack startling imagination and grand vision, he also appears to be genuinely searching for new approaches and to be reluctant to make radical changes until the research is in. For all his old reputation as a hard-liner?and Nixon's for that matter?the Administration is picking its way cautiously toward what is shaping up to be a less bloated, more efficient military apparatus and a more modest commitment overseas. Politics? Of course. Good politics and good policy are not, after all, mutually exclusive...
...Freshly returned from World War II Navy service, Laird at age 23 was elected to his father's seat in the Wisconsin legislature upon the latter's death. He served six years, then won a congressional election in 1952. * The Russians reciprocate. Laird is the Cabinet officer most criticized in the Soviet press. He has recently been accused of "frightening Americans" with his statements about Russian missile development...
...approval of the President," said Laird. That did not quite answer all the questions about the deal in the first place, but it nicely served to make any further complaints on the matter seem slightly academic. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, not fully satisfied, plans to pursue the issue in future hearings...