Word: quicked
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Democrats were quick to deflate speculation that the President's MX victory would provide momentum in Congress for his other unpopular programs, including large increases in the military budget and new aid to antigovernment contra guerrillas in Nicaragua. Even Republican Senator Paul Laxalt, Reagan's closest friend in Congress, admits that those are "wholly different issues," without the patriotic overtones that Reagan evoked so effectively in the MX campaign. Some legislators were even talking of chopping $1 billion or more from the $3.7 billion the Administration has requested for research on the Strategic Defense Initiative, usually called Star Wars...
...accompanies the paralysis of leadership. Even before Gorbachev was selected, there was already a cult of personality around him, the hope that he would be able to get the Soviet Union moving again and to keep it moving. In my opinion, that was as important a factor in his quick victory as the votes of loyalty that he got from the Politburo. It was a question of the mood of the elite. They needed somebody like him, not another member of the Old Guard. At the same time, Gorbachev is a very good tactician. It was crucial to his success...
...conference on that continent's famine, hand-delivered a special message to Gorbachev from President Reagan. The President had attended neither Brezhnev's nor Andropov's funeral, but, given the significance of the latest change in the Soviet leadership, there was some thought in the White House that a quick Reagan visit to Moscow for the Chernenko burial would constitute symbolic assurance of U.S. concern for better relations. At 9:30 a.m. Washington time, 3 1/2 hours after the announcement of Chernenko's death, Reagan and a small group of aides that included Secretary of State George Shultz and National...
Clearly it was much too early to take more than a quick measure of Gorbachev. First impressions, whether of new U.S. Presidents or new Soviet General Secretaries, have proved too often to be false impressions. Given the many promises made and broken, the aborted starts and wrong turnings in the tortuous history of U.S.-Soviet relations, there seemed little reason to hope that Moscow and Washington would be any more likely to take advantage of the present period of change to put their relationship on a new footing...
...than most Politburo members have had. During a two-week tour of Canada in May 1983, Gorbachev impressed officials with his straightforward, modest approach and his grasp of agricultural statistics. "Unlike other Soviet figures, he didn't need a brief," says a high-level Canadian official. "He was a quick learner." At one point, then Canadian Agriculture Minister Eugene Whelan bluntly told Gorbachev that he hoped the Soviets would continue their system, because "as long as you do, you will remain inefficient and will be the best market Canada could have." The translators, recalls a Whelan aide, were shocked...