Word: risk
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Washington version of budget brinkmanship, the stakes range from the health of the world's largest economy and the strength of its armed forces to the fate of a college student's grant. All that and more were put at risk last week, when the capital's political gamblers -- the President and the Democratic leaders of Congress -- allowed the nation to bump up against the threat of bankruptcy...
Bush's threat was undermined a day later by his own Defense Department. Pentagon Comptroller Sean O'Keefe told the Senate Armed Services Committee that an $8.1 billion cut in defense would result in a 10% loss in U.S. combat readiness, an unacceptable political risk...
...longer did Wilder risk racial polarization by talking about putting prejudice to the test. Now 58, his hair silver, his manner reassuring and his smile infectious, Wilder had grown far too adroit to speak of racial issues in anything other than soft, almost dulcet, tones. Throughout the 1980s, Wilder had consciously shaped his persona to make his blackness and ground-breaking achievements seem almost boring and quietly inevitable. He did not disown his racial identity, tossing off laugh lines like, "How can I not think of myself as a black man? I shave." His style, rather, was to envelop...
...this Byzantine maneuvering was but a prelude to Wilder's breakthrough: his nomination for Lieutenant Governor in 1985. Virtually no leading white politicians wanted Wilder on the ticket; the issue was whether they would risk his wrath to keep him off. Wilder cemented a successful alliance with Baliles, the underdog for the gubernatorial nomination, because he was in the weakest position to resist a black running mate. "There were people in the Baliles campaign," Wilder recalled afterward, "who didn't want me on the ticket either...
Wilder never faced a serious challenge for the gubernatorial nomination once he pressured State Attorney General Mary Sue Terry to defer her own ambitions until 1993. There was grumbling in the Robb faction of the state party, but once again, no one wanted to risk an open schism by trying to deprive Wilder of his moment on the mountaintop. There was no chance of a racially divisive primary, since Virginia Democrats, unlike those in other Southern states, nominate by convention. In a sense, Wilder was the beneficiary of old- fashioned back-room politics, just as Irish, Italian and Jewish candidates...