Word: punditing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Columnists walk a tightrope. To be either too bland or too savage usually erodes their following and, ultimately, their livelihood. One pundit who never errs on the side of niceness is Patrick Buchanan, a former aide to Presidents Nixon and Reagan. He earns a reported $500,000 a year from a column in 180 newspapers, lectures and daily TV exposure on CNN's Crossfire and the syndicated McLaughlin Group and Capital Gang. Blending unyielding right-wing views with incendiary rhetoric, he stirs deep passions. Last week Buchanan was teetering on the tightrope. His latest outbursts had even longtime allies accusing...
Which is why when almost every pundit wrings his hands in despair at low voter turnout -- some even feel obliged to propose creative schemes to induce people to vote -- I am left totally unmoved. Low voter turnout means that people see politics as quite marginal to their lives, as neither salvation nor ruin. That is healthy. Low voter turnout is a leading indicator of contentment. For a country founded on the notion that that government is best that governs least, it seems entirely proper that Americans should in large numbers register a preference against politics by staying home on Election...
...time. Take the man who is America's best practitioner of the art of columny: succinctly melding fact and opinion in an unforgiving 770-word format. Even though in a parade of predictions in late 1988 he called the fall of the Berlin Wall, this Pulitzer-prizewinning pundit also flatly asserted last March that the Soviet Union would never brook Eastern Europe's attempts at independence. "Depend on Mr. Gorbachev to crack down as Mr. Stalin would have, fraternally rolling in the tanks and shooting the dissenters," he wrote. "The present Kremlin leader was not chosen to preside over...
PROFILE: William Safire, top pop pundit...