Word: paradoxical
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...That Darman, after some detours, became George Bush's Budget Director last month shows a degree of adroit tenacity rare even among Washington's tribe of striving Type A's. He appears joyful in his new post, though his return to public service dumps him into a sticky triangular paradox. Alone among Reagan advisers, Darman lent his name to a Washington coinage: "Darmanesque" denotes the arcane stratagems he devised to promote Reagan policies. In the process of advancing Reaganomics, he sometimes swallowed his own skepticism about its wisdom. Now Darman must extricate Bush from the tar pit that is Ronald...
...appropriated the idea of the artist as demonic obsessive. He dealt with the question Why should your fantasies matter? by insisting that he was such an extraterrestrial creature, so tuned to the zeitgeist through the trembling antennas of his waxed mustache, that he could not be ignored. Armored in paradox, he was a household word rivaling Picasso in fame, at least in the eyes of a mass public that knew him as an eccentric first and a painter second...
After the dour, crabbed atmosphere of the Carter years, the country needed a mood change. The great failure, and great paradox, of the Reagan era is that its protagonist succeeded too well on that score. His rhetoric on domestic matters encouraged Americans to celebrate instant gratification at the expense of the future, while his policies channeled national energies away from enterprises of common purpose. Reaganomics increased the national debt by 170% and converted the U.S. from a major creditor to a vulnerable debtor in the global financial market...
...many Westerners, the idea of the Japanese monarchy seems a paradox in a country that has become the cynosure of the modern industrial world. Yet the institution, the oldest of its kind on the globe, lies at the center of Japan's national psyche, characterizing both the country's flexibility and its resistance to the shock of the new. As Akihito succeeds his father, the institution and the nation are at another beginning...
...paradox has bent the collective mind of the electorate into a pretzel. Before last week's debates, the Progressive Conservatives had looked like a good bet to win a majority in the House of Commons for a second consecutive term. A Gallup poll estimated that the Tories would claim roughly 40% of the vote -- enough to win 193 of the House's 295 seats -- with the New Democrats running at 29%, and Liberals at 28%. But Gallup also reported that 42% of Canadians oppose the free-trade agreement, 34% support it, and almost a quarter of the country is undecided...