Word: penchants
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...outlook, in prescription and also in his penchant for shaving the truth by the clever manipulation of easily grasped images, Newt Gingrich is Reagan's true heir. To appreciate Newt's World, consider just a few of the bombs the new House Speaker lobbed as he issue-surfed through his Dec. 4 appearance on NBC's Meet the Press...
...produces some narrative fireworks but also a few nagging questions in the aftermath. August and Katarina suffer unhappy fates for their refusal to be drawn into any plan that would include them in what passes for a regular life: he dies, she vanishes. Peter fares better, if a strong penchant for pomposity can be considered an improvement. He is now married and has a daughter (he calls them "the woman" and "the child") and writes things like "The life of every person contains something of significance" and "Nature is a blessing, an opportunity for growth that has been bestowed...
...been no more willing to unravel the elaborate system of entitlements like farm subsidies and Social Security and a variety of tax preferences that favor the rich and the established and make real tax relief for the working class unaffordable. Some of the G.O.P. have as great a penchant for social engineering, in the form of making moral rules for the country to follow, as the Democrats do for contriving Great Society programs. And despite their fondness for building jails and imposing tough rules for sentencing criminals, they may be no more adept at providing one of the basic voter...
...scientists returning to Asia bring more than just a Westernized preference for cappuccino over tea. They also carry with them a penchant for challenging the status quo. Until recently, Asian funding agencies still doled out research money according to traditional egalitarian formulas, with little regard for quality. Now they are being pressured to establish peer-review panels staffed by scientific experts to gauge the merit of competing proposals. Automatic promotions, still typical at many academic institutions, are also coming under attack, and some brave souls have even mounted an assault on the Confucian ethos -- particularly its stultifying worship of professors...
Some detractors, however, view her as an apparatchik dutifully carrying out Clinton's policy. Others carp at her penchant for television -- the President has personally ordered her to appear as often as possible -- suggesting it reflects a superficial approach to foreign-policy issues. ("Ambassador Halfbright" is whispered by several adversaries in U.N. corridors.) Hypersensitive U.N. diplomats also resent her absence from the U.N. party circuit, but she pleads too little time "to go schmoozing around the halls." "The people I work with appreciate the fact that I'm plugged into Washington," she says. "I'm in the inner circle...