Word: pressler
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...stodgy U.S. senate cannot boast many funny moments, and that's just one reason Larry Pressler is such a standout. Take the time a few years ago when the South Dakota Republican got up to leave the Senate Commerce Committee and walked instead into a closet. When he re-emerged a few minutes later, he tried to act as if nothing had gone wrong. He looked back into the empty space, waved as if he were saying goodbye to someone and closed the door. Then he located the real exit and left to titters from the audience...
...take the time in the mid-'80s when Pressler chose to testify before his own Commerce Committee. When a Senate colleague began to interrogate him, Pressler protested, "I don't think it's proper to ask hard questions to members." Or consider the fact that Republican committee staff members once took it upon themselves to supply Pressler with a stream of memos during meetings so that observers would think he was engaged in the proceedings...
...list keeps growing. Pressler added to his legend this year by bungling an attempt to attack the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. He sent the organization a survey that included politically incorrect questions about the race and gender of its employees. This caused a public tiff that Pressler now says he regrets, although he was not sorry enough to drop his effort to privatize the corporation. Acidly summing up Pressler's record of gaffes and obliviousness, his fellow South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle, now the Senate minority leader, once said, "A Senate seat is a terrible thing to waste...
With the Republicans in control of the Senate these days, Pressler is chairman of the committee whose room he once could not find his way out of. And thus this week it will fall to him to guide through the full Senate the biggest effort to deregulate the $250 billion communications industry since the breakup of AT&T in 1984. Lawmakers and lobbyists are holding their breath to see whether the man they consider the Forrest Gump of legislators is up to the task. Others aren't taking any chances. Senate majority leader Bob Dole has assigned Senator Larry Craig...
...convince your stock-holders [thatresearch is worth spending on], then I don't thinkit is the government's reponsibility to step in,"says Paddy Link, Pressler's chief of staff."Where's the leadership if you can't convince yourBoard of Directors...