Word: tobacco
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...what Mississippi attorney general Mike Moore thought he had negotiated last year when he reached a $368.5 billion settlement on behalf of 40 states. But support quickly vanished. Bill Clinton backed away amid protests by the health lobby and some Democrats that the deal was too easy on Big Tobacco. "I looked around," Moore recalls, "and there was nobody behind...
Certainly not McCain's fellow Republicans, who were finding their addiction to tobacco money difficult to give up. Instead, they created the illusion of action by spreading the many components of the settlement among various committees--much as kids spread lima beans around their plates to create the illusion of eating them...
Predictably, nothing happened until early March, when something very big happened. The Republicans came to the extraordinary realization that the tobacco industry could be sacrificed--had to be--lest the Clinton Administration hammer them on yet another populist issue. It was becoming clear to the G.O.P. that voters everywhere were increasingly anti-tobacco. Don Nickles, the Senate's second-ranking Republican, called a group of G.O.P. Senators into his office and forced a decision. A single committee would now handle the issue and produce a bill. It was an onerous assignment with a high risk of failure. But when...
McCain thought so. The Arizonan is known in politics mostly for his high-minded legislative failures--among them his dogged and so far futile quest to reform the way political campaigns are financed. On tobacco, McCain would again have public opinion behind him, but he also had to please an array of constituencies: Democrats, Republicans, the White House, the industry, plaintiffs' lawyers and hard-line public health groups represented by former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and former fda boss David Kessler...
...G.O.P. lawmakers gagged at the cost--privately they were still promoting the industry's interests. "We've got to go with the President's numbers," McCain cajoled a worried Republican in a phone call. "Otherwise we open ourselves up to the charge that all we care about is the tobacco companies...