Word: tactful
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Ever since V-J day, professional politicos had been padding softly behind General Dwight D. Eisenhower. His tremendous reputation, unencumbered by political liabilities, his wonderful nickname, his poise, tact, and amazing popularity made him the perfect presidential candidate. As a professional soldier he had no political commitments. He could run on either ticket.* But no matter how much applause he stirred up, the General consistently, calmly, sometimes humorously denied all political ambition...
...said of him (in Latin): "The truth is he himself showed such an example of kindly wisdom, such a combination of serious purpose, humanity and courtesy that the others soon had no thought in their minds save to labor with one common will for the success of all." His tact, humor and sincerity prompted a British novelist to say: "No American visiting this country has had his unfailing gift of saying the right thing at the right time...
...difficulty of remedying this situation is less apparent than the need that something be done. Artistic endeavours led by aesthetes generally turn out to be failures from which audiences turn politely. Businessmen produce Songs of Norway. It takes tact and talent to produce artistically valuable theatre and keep it going. In this the New England Opera Theatre is singularly fortunate in its leadership...
...with no reputation for tact, Monty acquitted himself nobly. At West Point he studied a practice session of the Army football squad. "I hope your team wins all its matches," he ventured. "Your West Point," he commented later, "is absolutely the cat's whiskers...
...refused to supply men to sit on the Government's "control board" supervising nationalization. Dryly, the Economist explained the reason why: "It may clear a man's mind wonderfully to know that he is to be hanged in the morning, but it shows some want of tact to expect him to tie the noose." After months of scrapping and haggling with the steel industry, Minister of Supply Wilmot announced sharp curtailment of the authority of the "control board": henceforth it will supervise renovation of the steel industry but will not plan for nationalization...