Word: nunne
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Something else must happen if Nunn is ever to become President. Americans will have to fall out of love with charisma. The words that define Nunn are "serious" and "studious." Thirty-second sound bites are not his forte. He once turned down a chance to appear on national television to speak about defense policy in response to President Reagan because the time allotted "wasn't enough to do justice to the subject...
...Nunn's Senate tenure reflects an eclectic mix of interests. National security is his primary focus, of course, and the keys to his influence are knowledge, timing and as little partisanship as possible. "By the time he starts talking about a subject," says Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, "he knows more about it than anybody else." "His real genius," says Republican William Cohen of Maine, "is to wait for the right moment to come up with a solution after allowing the sides to play themselves...
...Tower debate aside, Nunn's essential bipartisanship is almost uniformly accepted by his colleagues. So much so that even before he took over Armed Services, no less a Republican partisan than Dan Quayle called Nunn the "de facto" head of the committee even though it was chaired by the G.O.P.'s Barry Goldwater...
...Nunn was a man to reckon with almost from the day he entered the Senate. In fact, even before he was sworn in, he took steps to ensure that he'd be ready on day one. He hired a consultant to study the organization of several Senators' offices and had the desktops measured so he could plan his office space most efficiently. Six years later he was holding up SALT II for a Carter Administration commitment to increase conventional-forces spending. "They told me they couldn't think of how to spend more money," says Nunn, still incredulous. "That...
When it came to defense funding, Nunn had a kindred spirit in Carter's successor. But he clashed repeatedly with President Reagan over specific weapons systems. He didn't then, and still doesn't, think there is "anything magical" in the Navy's desire for 15 aircraft-carrier battle groups. He engineered the MX compromise, cut back Reagan's grandiose plans and today favors the single-warhead Midgetman over a rail-based MX. He described as "fantasy" Reagan's dream of a nationwide Star Wars shield and fought the former President's insistence that the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty permitted...