Word: leader
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...That is no easy feat. Senate majority leader is a strange job, unlike that of any other figure in Washington. Lacking the powerful rules of the House speaker or the bully pulpit of the presidency, the majority leader's chief job is to herd cats, in this case Senators, each of whom is a powerful figure in his or her own right. When it comes to health care, nearly every Senator in Reid's own party has a provision or a version he or she would like included; Reid's goal is to keep enough of those cats happy...
...quiet but tenacious leader, Reid has built his career on building consensus - cajoling members and sweetening deals with pet projects. The right disparages him for his occasional gaffes. He is often condemned by progressives for not calling Republicans' bluffs on threatened filibusters and rarely, if ever, using his 60-seat majority to ram through legislation. "I'm not so sure we have very many sticks available to us," says Jim Manley, a senior adviser to Reid. Reid is "an expert at the gentle art of persuasion. The members of his caucus see him as an honest broker and a straight...
...majority leader is also protecting his constituents. Dozens of governors have warned Congress about the bill's plans to expand Medicaid's rolls by millions of uninsured; most states have been strapped for cash in the economic downturn, many of them severely. But Nevada need not worry: thanks to Reid, the federal government is picking up its tab for the next four years. Such benefits for his home state have not gone unnoticed, or uncriticized. "I saw in a morning newspaper that Nevada was somehow miraculously taken care of in the provisions for Medicaid expenses," Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander remarked...
...Senate minority leader Tom Daschle became the first leader in nearly 50 years to lose his seat. In the months before the election he was paralyzed in the Senate, afraid to do anything that might make him more vulnerable. Reid, it seems, is taking the opposite approach. "It's always difficult being in leadership when you're up for re-election," says Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow, a member of the Democratic leadership who faced a tough re-election in 2004. "But Harry's very, very committed. He understands the important role he has in history...
...suspected of finding recruits in the two countries and sending them to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area to undergo training to eventually launch attacks in Europe. Among the group's members was Malika el Aroud, the widow of an al-Qaeda suicide bomber who killed the anti-Taliban militia leader Ahmed Shah Massoud in northern Afghanistan two days before the Sept. 11 attacks. El Aroud, a Belgian national, wrote a radical blog and participated in online forums urging Muslims to join the jihad against the West. The network was broken up last December when Belgian police rounded up 14 suspected...