Word: moralizer
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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During his two days of testimony, with no lawyer whispering in his ear and no litany of don't-recalls, the Secretary of State gave a distinct moral lift to an affair in which the line between heroes and villains has often been blurred. Even when Shultz was discussing whether he should have resigned to stop the arms-for-hostages scheme, his measured outrage was bracing. Given the "systematic way in which the National Security Council staff deliberately deceived me," he noted, "my sense of Did I do enough? has to a certain extent given way to a little edge...
...many of Ronald Reagan's supporters, the Iran-contra scandal is effectively over. By taking responsibility for the Iran-contra diversion, John Poindexter helped save the President, and Oliver North's star performance blurred the moral issues involved. Now some are calling for a conclusive gesture that they hope will close the book on Iranscam: a presidential pardon of Poindexter and North...
Blackmun, who received thousands of letters opposing the opinion, which was supported by a 7-2 court vote, seems an unlikely target for the moral outrage many of the messages expressed...
Another question: If the Constitution's system of checks and balances demands this kind of congressional surveillance of the presidency, why do the hearings so often lose their way in labyrinthine detail? Why don't Congressmen examine larger social and moral and political issues? The dense tangle of the Iran-contra affair, with its elaborate deceits and boxes within boxes, is, in the light of day, fairly simple. It involves two issues...
...Iran, where an incapacity to face hard decisions about hostages led the Administration to contravene its own boycott and sell arms to a terrorist state, thereby subverting the moral and political authority of the President. It is curious that the Reagan Administration, with its weakness for the cowboy ethic, should be so unwilling to face necessary losses, so sentimental about getting hostages home when the price of the rescue might be the collapse of an immense structure of policy -- and would inevitably mean the taking of far more hostages...