Word: politicians
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This combination of political score settling, commitment to reform and nationalism has so far proved to be political gold. Few of those who worked with a younger Koizumi would ever have predicted such popularity for him. At 35, he was still unmarried, a major drawback for an ambitious politician. A matchmaker was consulted, and Koizumi picked out a photo of a kimono-clad university student 14 years his junior. He proposed the day after their first date, and in 1978 Koizumi and Kayoko Miyamoto were wed before 2,500 guests. The marriage didn't last, and in 1982, after having...
...like the son longing for his father's attention, Japan is desperately pinning its hopes on the strangest politician the country has ever seen...
...public profile. Few realize that the effervescent election campaigner is in fact a loner, isolated from all but a tight-knit circle of longtime advisers; or that the New Age reformer is an old-fashioned nationalist at heart, influenced by some of the country's most extreme right-wing politicians; or that the man with the seemingly natural empathy for people is, in his private life, aloof and cold, prone to putting career before family. And only his closest friends realize that this consummate politician deeply despises Japanese politics, for reasons that are as much personal as they are philosophical...
Sometimes I wish politicians didn't keep the promises they make. Of course, that goes against all conventional political wisdom. A candidate makes a pledge on the campaign trail, a congressman takes a stand on the House floor and Lord help them if they decide to change their minds later. Their opponent in the next campaign skewers them and voters can be unforgiving. But I'm always nervous when a politician makes an ironclad promise, particularly when it has to do with the economy. Economic conditions are constantly changing. Assumptions and policy decisions made in one year - or even...
...into the fund if Bush wants to spend more on education and still give the Pentagon $18.4 billion extra next year for a national missile defense. And it may be a good idea to dip into the fund to help stimulate the economy. But so far, the only politician to stick his head above the parapet and say times have changed and so should our minds is Sen. Pete Domenici, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. "What's wrong with using it for education," Domenici said last week. "I have now talked with 15 economists. None of them...