Word: ruining
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Fortas: The Rise and Ruin of a Supreme Court Justice...
Murphy writes this biography as if it were a murder mystery, with the victim being Fortas' political life. In the end, he concludes, "The Rise and Ruin" of Fortas is the story of a murder-suicide. The strength of this massive work lies in the depth of detail offered and the grace and drama of the telling. Key incidents are hinted at then slyly tucked away by Murphy, only to be revealed at a later moment when the dramatic effect would be greater...
...Douglas was never brought to ruin for it. Murphy suggests that Douglas knew how to play political hardball in a way Fortas did not; when Douglas was bleeding, he struck back at the sharks while Fortas treaded water in deliberation. But there is more to the Fortas story than political ineptitude...
...short, Fortas was the ultimate creature of Washington, who wanted to be in on everything and accountable to no one. His ruin is thus not surprising, because there is a limit quite simply to what one can get away with. And if it is true that others got away with more or just as much and were never caught, that by no means implies that Fortas was a victim of ineptitude and not, in the lexicon of today, his own sleaze...
...Core thus needs to be rethought and further steeped in its own ideals. The faculty desperately needs to be enlarged so that more, smaller courses can be offered and undergraduates can be liberated from the menace of inept graduate students who have the potential to ruin otherwise fine courses fine courses and undermine even the most ideal curriculum...