Word: tactical
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Even after those novelists had made a name for themselves in the genre, their writing continued to be preoccupied with the society-imposed issue of marriage--seen as a sort of economic transaction and always, especially for the female protagonists, a survival tactic...
...unwittingly given misleading testimony to Congress about the Iran affair based on a falsified chronology that North had prepared with CIA assistance last November. "People are coming to grips with the fact that North just doesn't tell the truth very much," said one Reagan aide. But the tactic could backfire if the two rogue former NSC staffers, who have so far kept silent, decide to start talking. "So we're throwing Ollie over the side?" mused a White House official after watching the week's events. "That's not very smart...
...whether the contras will drown in the tidal wave of revelations currently washing over the White House. Certainly it is unwise to write off an army that has repeatedly shown staying power, if not fighting prowess. Indeed, in Nicaragua, there is talk that Honduras' recent attacks were a diversionary tactic to allow the contras to infiltrate Nicaragua in time for a spectacular holiday attack. In Honduras, however, the word is that the contras' fireworks will not begin until the end of January. Whenever the contras finally do resume their war, the pyrotechnics will have to be bright, indeed...
Nevertheless, Reagan's opponents are committing an egregious error by using this tactic. After all, the comparisons between this scandal and the Watergate break-in have nothing to do with any similarity between the two crimes. In fact, on one level, Watergate doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the Contra funding. Watergate involved petty squabbles between political parties while the Contra funding was a gross usurpation of Congress' power of the purse, a patent violation of the Constitution...
...world in terms of individuals may succeed occasionally as a political tactic, but the tactic would never be consistently effective if such a view were not part of a deep and sincerely held vision. Reagan wholeheartedly seems to believe that individuals and stories about individuals are the keys to general truths. That vision can go crazily awry; Reagan is known for responding to general questions with irrelevant, albeit funny or touching, anecdotes. But the vision itself can be valid and clarifying. When John Donne wrote, "I am a little world made cunningly," it was a comfort to believe that...