Word: sayings
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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That tendency explains why McCain is not well loved in the Republican cloakroom, where after-class feelings matter. "If he would just count to five sometimes," says a G.O.P. Senate veteran, "he would probably get a lot more done." Detractors say that's why he is never able to corral the votes to pass campaign-finance reform and why his tobacco legislation, which his committee passed by a vote of 19 to 1, never saw the President's desk. Hogwash, say allies like Feingold, who argue that without McCain, some legislation would never get as far as it does...
...harbor anger, he has displayed a surprising ability to let it go. He befriended David Ifshin, the war protester whose speeches were piped into his cell, and he led the charge to forgive the country that held him for so long. The effort took a tremendous toll on McCain, says Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, also a decorated Vietnam War hero, who watched the Navy pilot under siege by members of his own party and some veterans' groups. "I saw him suffer a lot of outrageous, outlandish accusations about his character and patriotism," says Democrat Kerry, "and I saw him weather...
...full of strong, simple ideas for cleaning up the mess. Ask him, however, about the concerns that actually drive elections--health care, education, Social Security, what he listlessly calls our "various domestic challenges"--and he can seem as lost and bored as a Sherpa in Kansas. He'll say, "We have to do a lot more" about this or "We've got to pay attention" to that, then lapse into an autopilot recitation of catchphrases: "...less government, lower taxes, less regulation, more authority to state and local officials, and do whatever I can to reduce the size of the Federal...
...message begins to seem unified and encompassing. "I don't mean to sound like there is one root cause of all our problems," he told 200 voters in New Hampshire last week, "but there is a significant cause of all our problems." One presumes he meant to say "many of" our problems, but he didn't correct himself...
...failed an interviewer's pop quiz by not knowing the leaders of three out of four world hot spots--Chechnya, India and Pakistan.* (He got right the leader of Taiwan, Lee Teng-hui.) But more troubling was the fact that when exposed to questions from real voters about, say, the impact of the Internet on rural America, Bush gets lost in verbiage, as if struggling to put meaning behind words...