Word: oval
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...presidential incarnation, George Bush was the Democrats' juiciest target: the perennial preppy, the suspect wimp, the Vice President who was always off at a ball game or a funeral when weighty affairs of state were being decided. But after eight months in the Oval Office, Bush tops even Ronald Reagan in popularity (70% approval), a reversal of fortune that has plunged the out party into another of its periodic identity crises. Last week, in an orgy of finger pointing, party stalwarts from New York Governor Mario Cuomo to national chairman Ron Brown asked, in effect, Where are the Democrats...
...Soviet conventional forces in Europe at a May 11 meeting with Secretary of State James Baker in Moscow. "That was really the green light," said an official. "If we didn't move then, we were going to go to the NATO summit without anything." In a May 15 Oval Office meeting, Bush, Baker, Scowcroft, chief of staff John Sununu, Joint Chiefs Chairman William Crowe and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney gathered to discuss ways to make a proposal with "punch." Scowcroft suggested that Bush propose deep reductions in U.S. and Soviet ground forces and combat aircraft in Europe. The President liked...
Moving quickly, Crowe and Cheney formed a small task force to study the ! force cuts in time for a May 19 visit to Kennebunkport, Me. That session was followed by a Monday-afternoon meeting in the Oval Office. There, Crowe told Bush the military could accept a 20% reduction in manpower and a 15% cut in aircraft without significantly weakening NATO's plans for fighting a European war. Baker argued that 25% would sound more dramatic. The President listened closely and asked a lot of questions. Finally, he settled on the lower, safer number. "O.K., I think...
After the Cabinet sessions, Bush repairs to the Oval Office and widens his net. He often invites Darman or Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady along to go over this point or that; sometimes he turns it into a working lunch. Bush is soon on the telephone shopping the options around to his "sources" on Capitol Hill: Senator Robert Dole on political matters, Ohio Congressman Willis Gradison on health care and economic matters, Tennessee Republican Don Sundquist on tax questions. Following the May Cabinet debates over which countries to name as unfair traders under the new "Super 301" section...
...staff, "I just know it is the right thing to do," and hurried home to Washington to confront his first hostage crisis as President. He jumped off his helicopter Marine One onto the South Lawn of the White House. Walking in the fetid summer air toward the Oval Office, he kicked an acorn lying on the drive, a small sign of George Bush's frustration at finding himself caught in the terrorist web that humiliated his predecessors. That was about his only display of raw anger...