Word: reformer
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...because he seemed a simple, honorable antidote to the excessive dishonesty of the Nixon era. Clinton won because he was far more talented than his opponents--George H. W. Bush and Bob Dole--but also because he rejected his party's orthodoxy on crime (especially the death penalty), welfare reform, free trade and fiscal conservatism. One could argue that the only winning strategy for Democrats in the past nine presidential campaigns has been camouflage...
There wasn't much romance in campaign-finance reform, either, but John McCain managed to make it into a rollicking adventure in 2000. McCain was a brash, confident, unfettered candidate. The Democrats have been too frightened--scared that their belief in government, in larger public purposes, could be twisted into public perversity by the Republicans--to even attempt fizziness, to say nothing of brashitude. This lack of confidence has shriveled the Democrats. They run for office in shackles of their own making...
...talk about Bush's tax cuts. Instead, the Democrats ran on three issues: they blamed Bush for the recession, without offering an alternative; they tried to scare senior citizens about the privatization of Social Security; they offered a wildly expensive prescription-drug plan for the elderly without proposing any reform of the Medicare system. This was not only ineffective and uninspiring, it was disgraceful...
...school who refused to become a Communist Youth member. In high school, after openly criticizing the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, he was sent to a labor camp for three years. Rather than escape to Miami in the 1980 Mariel boatlift, he stayed in Cuba to work for democratic reform. Now his doggedness has prompted one of Castro's most ironfisted crackdowns: scores of Paya's fellow dissidents have been arrested for treason and given lengthy prison terms. Paya, 51, says he's undeterred. "We're the first nonviolent force for change this island has ever known," he told TIME...
...government harassment of the opposition is on the increase. But as a diplomat in Rangoon conceded, the generals have so little contact with outsiders that "none of us really know the reasons behind the decisions." Few in Rangoon expect, however, that Razali's visit will move the long-promised reform process forward. Even in a miserable economic climate, the junta is buying time...