Word: phrase
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Democrat! Even with the polls of the previous weeks it was hard to believe that a Democratic president could actually be elected. We Red Sox fans have been close before. All the distinguished commentary in the world didn't match up to watching George Bush concede and hearing the phrase "president-elect Bill Clinton." Some of my friends got drunk, others danced in the streets, some literally thanked...
Finally, Clinton's hope for the future draws on both the promise of his character and the vision of his policies. He will build coalitions around workable programs. He will combine his passion and speech-making with the competence Dukakis promised. He will be, in a phrase that the cynics have driven to oxymoronism, a good politician...
...HAUNTED BY WATERS," Norman Maclean wrote at the end of A River Runs Through It, his memoir-novella about growing up in Montana in the early years of this century. The phrase is both appropriate and curious: appropriate because his little story (104 pages) is mostly about standing in mountain streams with his brother Paul, fly-fishing for trout; curious because Maclean's prose is dry and laconic, nothing watery about it. It does not rush or eddy or -- heaven forfend -- gurgle. It runs steady and clear, and beneath its surface you sense the darting shadows of powerful emotions...
...nation seems ready for change, although fear of it -- and of the untested newcomer who would lead it -- still gives some hope to Bush. A majority may yet decide, in Reagan's phrase, that America's future is too important "to be trusted to a blind date." Enough may agree again with what Bush said four years ago: "Maybe there is an old-shoe familiarity. People will give me credit because, see, I've been through the mill...
...Ronald Reagan got off scot-free when he confidently forecast that his economic elixir of tax cuts and defense hikes would miraculously produce "a balanced budget by 1983, if not earlier." At least in 1988 Ann Compton of ABC deserved credit for pressing George Bush: "Isn't the phrase 'no new taxes' misleading the voters?" With mangled syntax, Bush responded lamely, "No because that's -- that -- I'm pledged to that...