Word: tr
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...TR looms over every modern president, not just Republicans, as a goad or a reprimand, a taunt or an inspiration. Historian, hunter, soldier, essayist, cowboy, megalomaniac - he was bigger than life, in the way that all politicians hope to be. Richard Nixon, a president whose insecurities and intimations of unworthiness reached pathological levels, invoked TR throughout his presidency, right up to the mawkish speech he gave as he left the White House two steps ahead of the sheriff. For politicians of the soft and pampered boomer generation - "well-meaning little men," as TR once called the type, "with receding chins...
...TR's influence on Bush reaches beyond rhetoric and interior decorating. Early on Bush declared himself a different kind of conservative, different from the government-libeling libertarians who seized Congress in the Republican Revolution of 1994. Like TR, he would be a "big government conservative," a believer in "limited but vigorous" federal power. Indeed, Bush conservativism has proved to be so unorthodox as to be not really conservative...
...Where Bush's agenda most resembles TR's is in its limitless ambition - its incessant busy-ness, its desperate need to appear to be addressing everything all at once. Even as he seeks the "end of tyranny in our world," Bush would also remake the government's entitlement system, rewrite the nation's tax code, reform its legal system, revolutionize worker training and health care; he would amend the constitution to define marriage and insert Washington into the nation's local schools as never before. In May, the administration celebrated one of its most trivial, and typical, programs - the Department...
...stand at Armageddon," TR once told his followers, "and we battle for the Lord." Bush has never gone quite that far, but the world-saving impulse that is TR's most unappealing legacy inspires him even so. "Small-government" conservatives - which is to say, conservatives - wish he'd find another 20th century Republican hero. He might want to investigate Calvin Coolidge, whose own conservatism was more modest, more peaceable, and - by the way - more popular. If the president insists, he can even call...
...trés chèr. No resort town is dirt-cheap, but Cannes has been getting more expensive - cher, as the French say - through no fault of its own. The Euro, whose exchange rate five years ago was under a dollar, is now a pricey $1.28. Don't despair. You can find many an excellent dinner for less than $40. And your transportation budget, except for getting from the Nice airport to Cannes and back, is exactly zero. Every hotel is within walking distance from every screening and nearly every party. For the rare out-of-town soiree...