Word: simonized
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Scars from that race lingered, even as Simon won a House seat in 1974. What haunted him was his failure to respond directly to Walker's charges. "I learned that if your opponent takes out after you, you take out after him," he says. If anything, Simon erred the other way in his 1984 upset of three- term Senator Charles Percy: he was too aggressive. As David Axelrod, who was and still is a top Simon campaign adviser, puts it, "When he lashed out against Percy, there was no question that some of that anger was lingering anger about...
...nearly three years in the Senate have been uneventful; the soft-spoken Simon is universally well liked by his colleagues, but even while on the Judiciary Committee during the Robert Bork hearings, he did little to claim public notice. He is very much a loner, acting as his own chief speechwriter and counsel. His presidential race began almost by accident. He endorsed Arkansas Senator Dale Bumpers, and then belatedly jumped into the fray in May after Bumpers joined the ranks of Democratic sideliners...
...each campaign there is a season, and as Dukakis sizzled in the summer, so has Simon flowered in the fall. The New Republic plastered his image on the cover, along with the Warholian legend, "Paul Simon, your 15 minutes have arrived." Joseph Biden's top Iowa lieutenants endorsed him. The latest New York Times-CBS poll showed Simon jumping into first place among Democrats in Iowa, with 16% support. New York Governor Mario Cuomo tossed an unexpected garland in Simon's direction last week, pronouncing that he looks "strong" and that "I feel great, great empathy with...
There remains, to be sure, a certain implausibility about Simon as the eventual nominee. Image is part of the problem; unfashionable bow ties and horn-rims can captivate a limited number of anti-chic contrarians, but they can make a candidate seem quirky to others. So is ideology; Simon's dovish rhetoric seems unlikely to play well in the South, even though Iowa voters respond to applause lines like "I think the choice is the arms race or the human race." Simon may confound liberal orthodoxy by his support of a balanced-budget amendment, but the centerpiece of his domestic...
Indeed, the basis for Simon's current appeal is the very thing that could % prove his undoing: his frequent claims that "more than any other candidate I have demonstrated that I am willing to do what's unpopular." His sartorial and ideological independence, along with his fealty to the old-time Democratic religion, can do little more than grant him his 15 minutes of celebrity. To become President, he must make sure that these go-it-alone traits do not begin to seem like studied eccentricity, wearisome piety and philosophical quaintness...