Word: reaganism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...takes six years to build a car when it only took us four years to win World War II"), and the company ultimately paid him $700 million just to go away and, it was hoped, shut up. (Perot characteristically took the money and kept on talking.) The Reagan Administration went from friend to bitter foe over the issue of the missing in action allegedly still in Vietnam, as Perot kept hinting that some broad and ill-defined conspiracy was preventing America from repatriating the MIAS. Texas Democratic Governor Mark White in 1984 recruited him to head a statewide commission...
...General Motors, where he ridiculed other board members as "pet rocks," Perot had his fans. "I've never seen an executive so accessible to his own people," says former executive vice president Elmer Johnson, who negotiated Perot's $700 million buyout. "Maybe it's a little simplistic, like Ronald Reagan could be, but he knows how to prioritize and exactly where he wants to go." But the consensus is that Perot resorted too quickly to guerrilla tactics at GM, lobbing brickbats from the sidelines, rather than ever trying to build support on the board or enunciating a clear road...
...since the presidency was not designed for the fainthearted. Perot's will to win is indeed intense but presumably no greater than that of John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson or, more ominously, Richard Nixon. Perot may be mulishly stubborn when he thinks he is right, but then so were Reagan and Harry Truman. A presidential election is, after all, a choice among available alternatives -- and right now Perot is not exactly competing against an all- star team from Mount Rushmore. Says political analyst Kevin Phillips: "If Bush is re-elected, I don't think he'll have a successful four years...
...BOTTOM LINE: A paean to Reaganomics that glosses over the excesses and inequities of the Reagan...
This line is not surprising coming from a political heir of Ronald Reagan, who voiced his contempt for public assistance with apocryphal stories of "welfare queens" driving Cadillacs. What is surprising is how many Democrats and liberals are sounding the same themes. Presumptive nominee Bill Clinton insists that "those on welfare move into the workplace" within two years. New Jersey Governor Jim Florio denounces the current welfare system as "morally bankrupt." Many state governments, meanwhile, are slashing benefits and throwing thousands off the rolls. "America has moved from a war on poverty to a war on the poor," says Yale...