Word: off-the-cuff
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...former film idol is not used to acting out a role, like the presidency, without censured script in hand. In past microphone tests, not knowing that he could be heard, he threatened to bomb the Russians and treat terrorists with-like vengeance. When off-the-cuff remarks mar the wholesome image he tries to project, he expects a purged "take two." But the chief exec is under the constant, unforgiving spotlight of live TV. Goof-ups are on the record, like...
United States pressure on Marcos was one hope of preventing the slaughter. But that hope is fading rapidly, under the weight of the sleepy cowboy's off-the-cuff remarks in Tuesday's news conference...
...pomp and circumstance, it seemed that some of the sizzle had gone out of Gorbachev's celebrated style. From the moment of his airport appearance, the General Secretary seemed faintly subdued. Unlike some of the off-the-cuff speeches that he has delivered at home, his remarks in Paris often had a formulaic quality, as if written by committee...
...image-conscious Gorbachev has repeatedly flashed his smile on Soviet TV, visiting factories and plunging into street crowds to deliver off-the-cuff speeches. In Leningrad, a woman shouted to him, "Just get close to the people and they won't let you down." As the throng pressed in on him, Gorbachev shot back, "Can I get any closer?" In Kiev, he suffered a rare public slip of the tongue, twice referring to the country he leads as "Russia" before correcting himself to say "the Soviet Union, as we now call it, and as it in fact is." The mistake...
When President Reagan quipped on Aug. 11 that he had outlawed Russia and would begin bombing in five minutes, he little suspected that his off-the-cuff remark would bring such a storm of protest. If many Americans had already forgotten, the rest of the world was still talking about a gaffe that seemed to reinforce the worst stereotypes of Reagan as the trigger-happy cowboy President. Even to many in the U.S., the President's rhetoric of late has lapsed into the stark, sometimes reckless-sounding anti-Sovietism that he indulged in early in his Administration and later...