Word: pragmatist
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With that, the first stage of Mitterrand's plan to shift the country's political axis was in place. During the last five years of his seven-year first term, the President determinedly changed his own political color from radical to pragmatist. Now he wants a government that is still steered by Socialists but "open" to other, middle-of-the-road currents. In a second stage, the President wants to form a center-left coalition government composed of both Socialists and leading members of the current center-right parties that have been backing Chirac...
This he resisted, except in token ways, as when he asserted his desire to be the "education President," a nice phrase that remains a flesh-free bone in his skeletal rhetoric. To go much further would be to flaunt the reality that, unlike Reagan, Bush at heart is a pragmatist rather than an ideologue, a manager rather than an innovator. In retrospect, Bush's caution was just right for the orthodox Republican primary electorate in most states, and particularly in the South, where Reagan's popularity rating in the party remains above 80%. But presidential campaigns are about change...
...Henry Baker arrived at the White House last March, he brought with him a reputation as the great conciliator. Moderates expected his skills as a consensus builder to work legislative magic, easing Ronald Reagan into the new realities of a Democratic Congress. Conservatives feared that his instincts as a pragmatist would blur the President's ideological vision...
...pragmatist in Costner beat out the performer, and he enrolled at Cal State-Fullerton to study marketing and finance. By his senior year he was bored. "I picked up a copy of the college daily paper and saw an ad for Rumpelstiltskin auditions," he recalls. "I didn't get a part, but my creative spirit was pounding...
...make it interesting. There wasn't any real story. Ness and Capone never met. Capone went to jail for income tax evasion, which is not a very dramatic climax. So I made up a story about two of the good guys: Ness and Jimmy Malone, the idealist and the pragmatist...