Word: statesmen
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...photo finish. "You may be collecting your Social Security before we finish this commission, but I assure you it will be there when the time comes," quipped Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York as he entered Blair House, the capital's official guest residence for visiting statesmen, where the eleventh-hour negotiations took place. Administration officials, led by White House Chief of Staff James Baker, conferred on and off with various combinations of commission members throughout the panel's last official day of existence. The group finally reached a compromise agreement that satisfied a majority...
...Nixon was the personal friend of a lot of the leaders and most of them respect him highly. This is by far the number one point the ex-prez seems intent on conveying to the reader. Yes, there's some biographical information on each statesmen, and some analysis of reason for their success or failure. But the book rises and falls on the anecdotes Nixon tells about Churchill, Adenauer, Yoshida, et. al., This is a tactic that could--no, should--work; after all, where Nixon really can add to history, so to speak, is through piercing insight gained through personal...
However, such moments are rare, and as a result we see more a portrait of Nixon's own failings than cogent portrayals of modern-day statesmen. And nowhere is this point better driven home than in the final pages of the book, where Nixon sums up his reflections on leadership. Closing what has in truth been a halfway interesting read, one is struck by the noticeable lack of comment on the moral qualities of leadership. Oh, Nixon doesn't miss the chance to make a comment or two about Khruschev's untrustworthiness or duplicity. But when it comes...
...career diplomat who may have to be content with the largely symbolic post of Soviet President. Or Boris Ponomarev, 77, a onetime historian, who seemed the ideal candidate to fill the role of party "theologian" before Andropov took the job held by the late Mikhail Suslov. Not elder statesmen like Brezhnev's Premier, Nikolai Tikhonov, 77, a man with more experience in government than in the party apparatus, or the widely traveled and urbane Central Committee Secretary Konstantin Rusakov, 72, who lacks a vital prerequisite: Politburo membership. One contender seems to be on the way out. Party Secretary Andrei...
...died in 1924 and made way for Joseph Stalin, who died 29 years later, to be replaced briefly by Georgi Malenkov, who was outmaneuvered by Nikita Khrushchev, who in turn was ousted by Brezhnev in 1964. The changeovers in Moscow might as well have occurred on another planet. U.S. statesmen of those years had little understanding of what had happened, much less any anticipation of what was going to happen next, and still less any sense of what the U.S. could do about...