Word: matters
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...only does the president have to worry about shifts in Soviet government, he must also combat criticism from Democrats in Congress, who want the president to make the most of Gorbachev's reign, no matter how soon it might...
...this instance nothing would be lost by showing more care. For the same reasons we have a "winter break" rather than a "Christmas holiday," the request that there not be a mindless 1950s dinner seems reasonable. Symbols do matter, if only because people take them seriously, need them to prove that their worst fears are merely that...
...sword does turn up, after some unlikelihoods normal to popular adventure. Perhaps it was Arthur's, but Burgess, who invented it, now seems to feel that it doesn't much matter. Both he and his characters discount Welsh nationalism as unserious playacting. One of his protagonists, in exasperation, chucks the sword into a pond, where it sinks without a deathbed speech. He explains, "I had to grasp a chunk of the romantic past and find it rusty." Which does not entirely answer a last-page question to the author: "What was that all about...
...something for everybody. The central point, however, was unambiguous. A debate rages over the exact effect monumental federal deficits have on the nation's economic health and its role as a world leader. But the President left no doubt that he disdains those who claim that deficits do not matter. If asked, Bush would undoubtedly agree with the assessment of Alice Rivlin, a former head of the Congressional Budget Office. "The budget deficit," she told the Wall Street Journal, "has become a defense issue, a foreign policy issue, a health-care issue, an education issue. Getting the budget deficit behind...
...seemed willing to raise new revenues if euphemisms like "definitional changes" and "user fees" could be substituted for the word tax. Then, in a yin-yang reminiscent of the early 1980s, when he helped craft Reagan's acceptance of revenue enhancements, Darman backed off, invoking the "duck test." No matter what a revenue raiser is called, he told Congress, if it looks like a tax and sounds like a tax, and people perceive it to be a tax, it is a tax -- and thus violates the President's pledge. Unless, he concluded cryptically, there are special circumstances...