Word: pollyannish
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...have listened with increasing distress over the past several months to the pollyannish placidity of the pronouncements by our government leaders and members of the "intellectual" establishment to the effect that the nature of Communism has changed and mellowed, that the Soviets wouldn't dare interfere in the Czechoslovak experiment with freedom...
Still, more and more people are beginning to feel that things are going well in Viet Nam, and Walt Rostow's elevation from the basement reflects far more than Pollyannish optimism. Soon after Johnson took office, Rostow (then a top State Department policy planner) said flatly: "Viet Nam is Johnson's Cuba; it will make him or break him." As one of the Administration's toughest-talking hawks, he began urging heavy commitments of ground troops early in Kennedy's tenure-nearly four years before Johnson actually made the decision in 1965. In a town where...