Word: panderer
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Then a suddenly bellicose Tsongas attacked Clinton personally as a "cynical and unprincipled politician," a "pander bear" eager to promise everything to everyone. Jetting around the South, Clinton told reporters at a late-night press conference in Nashville that Tsongas was the real panderer, with Wall Street the prime beneficiary, and that Tsongas had belied his image as a "truth teller" by lying about the impact of Clinton's position on a middle-class tax cut. A Tsongas ad had implied that the reduction would worsen the deficit. Clinton's plan would offset the loss with a higher rate...
...maneuvering in recent weeks. First, critics said Ford was slow to take the Reagan challenge seriously, in part because the former actor did not win a primary until the North Carolina contest in late March 1976. Apart from banning the word detente at the White House, Ford refused to pander to the party's right wing. Instead he crisscrossed the country to meet Reagan head on, in a series of trips that made him look desperate and distinctly nonpresidential...
...Maryland, a state with a proven affection for low-key cerebral Democrats, remains his best shot. Tsongas' challenge is to show that he is an economic statesman with the courage to tell the truth to the American people, while painting Clinton as just another glad-handing Governor willing to pander to the voters with giveaways. That is why Tsongas, the candidate of pain -- both economic and personal -- zings Clinton over his advocacy of a middle-class tax cut, a ! popular, but economically questionable, nostrum...
None of the announced candidates can top Mario Cuomo, who scores a perfect 10 on the Pander Meter. Some highlights: in 1988 Cuomo unsuccessfully advised Michael Dukakis to break with the 30 Democratic U.S. Senators (most of them strong supporters of Israel) who had urged Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to negotiate with the Palestinians. In June 1990 Cuomo praised Shamir for "correctly refusing to offer any guarantees that would limit the settlement" of Soviet Jews "anywhere in Israel." Last month Cuomo derided President Bush's Middle East maneuvers, saying, "I don't believe you should be evenhanded between the people...
Both share a fear of the mongrelization of white Western culture, with an implicit belief in the inferiority of non-Western culture. Both appeal to the ideal of tolerance in defense of intolerance. Both pander to anti-intellectualism, using the academy as an easy target for frustration over larger social change. Both are discomfited, most basically, by the erosion of traditional forms of power...