Word: sununu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Their slap-and-stroke routine extends to Oval Office meetings, where Bush is unfailingly gracious, whether with earnest junior staffers or craven special pleaders. It is Sununu's role to wring useful information out of unctuous presentations and rebut one-sided arguments, and he delights in it. Bush clearly relishes the edge and the rigor that Sununu provides. "He has made a lot of friends for our Administration," Bush says, "on the basis of competence, sheer competence...
...President knows, Sununu has also made plenty of enemies through sheer insolence. He slammed down the phone during a foreign policy argument with Republican Congressman Mickey Edwards of Oklahoma. He shouted obscenities at Senate Republican leader Bob Dole's press secretary over a routine news release. He berated House Republican leader Bob Michel for not supporting the President with sufficient enthusiasm, moving Michel to note that "sometimes we have to remind Governor Sununu that this is not the New Hampshire legislature." Democratic Senator Tim Wirth of Colorado says what many Washington insiders feel: Sununu "thinks he's the only smart...
...Sununu above using double-dealing and deception to achieve the President's goals. In March he told Delaware Democrat Joseph Biden that Bush would veto the clean-air bill the Senate was debating if it included an expensive amendment. Meanwhile, he privately told Idaho Republican Steve Symms just the opposite. Symms had favored the amendment because he hoped it would trigger a veto of the bill, which Symms opposed as too tough on polluting industries. Sununu led Symms to believe the amendment would only make things worse because Bush was inclined to sign the clean-air bill with or without...
...Sununu does not think like Bush or any other let's-make-a-deal politician. He was trained as an engineer and a debater, and it shows. The engineer in him enormously enjoys the substantive questions of governance: What kind of pollution control is cost-effective? Which jet fighter technologies should we share with Japan? To such questions, Sununu brings voracious curiosity, a keen analytical gift and near total recall. Budget Director Richard Darman, Sununu's only intellectual peer in the Bush inner circle, points out that "Sununu is trained in fluid dynamics and has a good sense...
...years before he studied engineering, Sununu was whipping older boys in high school debate tournaments. Then as now, he could argue either side of a question with equal gusto. Unlike lawyers, debaters never seek friendly, out- of-court settlements: their goal is to intellectually destroy the opponent. Sununu wields his prodigious memory like a sword, inundating his adversary with data. And he resorts early and often to ad hominem bullying. Observes a senior White House official: "There is something in Sununu's personality where he cannot stay in his seat if someone says or does something that he thinks...