Word: lifers
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There are three main paths in the U.S. today: Talent, Lifer and Mandarin. It's possible to think of American politics as an epic power struggle among the three paths; in this year's presidential campaign, Buchanan is the Talent path's candidate, Dole is the Lifer path's, and Clinton is the Mandarin path...
...much as a politician can be one, Bob Dole is a Lifer. He has represented Kansas in Congress continuously since 1960, sticking to it and through the years steadily moving upward. His virtues are the Lifer virtues of constancy, leadership, persistence and credit sharing. He is often charged with changing his views too readily. The honest answer to that, which he can never give, would be: Life isn't about what your views are; it's about what you get done. Having positions on issues, especially social issues like abortion and gay rights that aren't central to the ongoing...
...product of Catholic schools, Pat Buchanan has some Lifer proclivities: he can communicate with people who play by the rules and have traditional beliefs at their core. What he really is, however, is a Talent. His stints in government have been brief and confined to the White House staff, a Lifer-free environment. He has spent most of his life as a highly successful small businessman who designs, manufactures and distributes opinions. Buchanan is brilliant at giving voice to the idea that the big, organized forces in society--everybody from big corporations to the United Nations--are a kind...
What Clinton has going for him, besides incumbency, is a tremendous ability to project empathy. Dole completely lacks this. It's part of his Lifer-ness that he simply is what he is; any efforts he makes to pretend otherwise inevitably seem tinny and false. Clinton, on the other hand, comes across as a Mandarin to Mandarins, would do better than Dole in coming across as a Talent to Talents, and might even be able to seem more like "one of us" to Lifers if Dole didn't have his heroic military service to backstop himself with his natural constituency...
...life movement is regarded as a group of religious fanatics. I have to confess that before I went to the clinic, the image I had in my mind of a pro-lifer was a decidedly negative one. I imagined this person as a deeply religious, Southern white male, probably uneducated, probably racist and fairly low on the socioeconomic ladder. But when I looked around myself at the vigil, I saw people from all walks of life. Men and women, Blacks and whites, young and old were gathered together in prayer...