Word: toweritis
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Goar trained for the Hill by doing "towers." That is, running up and down 16 flights of stairs in the Mather tower two or three times at night. What hill...
...Wall Street Journal editorializes that the real purpose of toppling Tower was "to cripple a President fresh from an electoral victory. To demonstrate that the real power lies in a PAC-elected Congress immune from effective voter control." And ultimately "to dismantle the presidency" no less. Of course, 87% of the members of Congress are also fresh from election. But this doesn't count, the argument goes, because Congress has "less turnover . . . than in the Supreme Soviet," as former President Reagan has complained. Only six House incumbents lost re-election bids last year, and more than 85% of current members...
With the notable exception of the John Tower fracas, Bush has muted public controversy. He cut a deal with Congress to quiet the poisonous contra-aid issue. He tiptoed out of the Eastern Air Lines strike early and into the Alaskan oil spill belatedly. Twice in the past few days he has mentioned his admiration of the leadership style of Dwight Eisenhower, best known for his ability to reconcile contentious and talented people. "No room for grudges in this business," Bush told one meeting of young staff members...
...advisers and the media had us believe. From the time the Iran-Contra scandal broke in the fall of 1986 until Reagan left office in January. the Reagan Administration insisted that the president had no knowledge of the diversion of taxpayer funds to the Contras. The fault, said the Tower Commission, lay not in the president, but in his hands-off "management style," thereby absolving him of personal responsibility for the scandal...
...weakness for vodka. There are performances of enchanting sweetness from Anton Tabakov as a young co-worker and of feral malignity from Valeri Shalnykh as a mock-friendly gang enforcer. But the most memorable scenes show Sparrow alone with his cacophony of fears, climbing arduously up to a bell tower where he can hear the euphony of wind and birds and a distantly remembered lullaby, until a screeching train cuts off his reverie. Emotive yet astringent, these are moments worthy of Charles Laughton in a play sometimes deserving of comparison with Gorky's The Lower Depths. If Soviet theater remains...