Word: shrewdness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...prohibited from directly endorsing candidates, or having official ties to a political party, a line that Reed has closely skirted in the past. TIME's Laurence Barrett notes that Reed, who built up Pat Robertson's moribund operation into a 1.6 million-member behemoth by 1995, is a shrewd political operative who should be very successful running campaigns. "Reed is considered a very skilled, talented person in the field of political strategy and tactics," Barrett says. "He knows how the machine works, and he knows how to work it." Likely clients include candidates in high-visibility Senate races...
...wrong, on all sides and without letup, is that stupidity ruled--quite literally in the case of the last Czar, Nicholas II (who comes across here as dull-minded and weak), and his wife Alexandra (dull-minded and forceful). At a time when Russia might have been transformed by shrewd and humane reforms into a parliamentary democracy with a figurehead monarch (a role that would have suited a Czar whose only talent was that he sat on a horse well), Nicholas saw himself as a stern 17th century autocrat. Liberalization was dangerous; had not his grandfather, the cautious reformer Alexander...
Even if Clinton is telling the truth about being kept in the dark, his administration's lax policies in granting access to the White House and his oversight of those policies are nonetheless disturbing. Clinton is a shrewd, seasoned politician who has surrounded himself with competent aides, so it is difficult to believe that neither he nor members of his staff ever questioned whether the DNC's many donors and solicitors with ties to Southeast Asian interests might be working with ulterior motives...
Both Lott and Clinton were unathletic in communities that prized prowess on the field. They excelled at their studies, music and campus politics--yet both failed in their bids for student president in college. Both avoided the draft. Both married politically shrewd women from families of higher social standing. Neither man much cares for alcohol, though both enjoy a celebratory cigar. Both are Baptists who believe in "redemption and resurrection"--as Lott often reminds a wayward lawmaker whose vote he is seeking...
Each novel, in its style, captures the style of its generation, and can be read by bemused elders as a shrewd caricature of disaffected post-childhood wanderers desperate to avoid adulthood. Garland's characters are young European and American backpackers who circle like dead leaves in an eddy through the guesthouses of Southeast Asia: this month Lombok, next week or next month or in another life, Loh Liang or Zanskar. Garland writes as they travel, without emotion or opinion or allegiance. His narrator is an affectless young Englishman named Richard, who, in Thailand, comes upon a hand-drawn map that...