Word: trail
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Much of the personal drama of politics takes place behind the scenes. Here are some of the latest whispered tales from the campaign trail...
...boss Henry Kissinger labeled Haig "colossally self-confident." On the campaign trail, only Jesse Jackson has as much panache. Genial one moment, Haig can then lower his voice, narrow his eyes in what an aide once described as a "laser blue death ray" and deliver a bitter, blistering attack on George Bush. Often hailed as a hero, Haig also has a sinister mystique: while a deputy in the White House, he helped manage the secret wiretapping program ordered by Nixon and Kissinger, and he made regular trips to the FBI to read the transcripts. In Europe, where he performed masterfully...
What is lost when heroes vanish? Henry David Thoreau (a man who would have been at home in 1968) wrote an enigmatic throwaway line in Walden: "I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse and a turtle dove, and am still on their $ trail." The words, vaguely allegorical and haunting, have something in common with Paul Simon's "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?" One has only to inspect the field of presidential candidates in 1988 to feel a sense of some hero loss in the drama of American life...
...others involved must squeeze their work on church projects into spare time after doing their official work on state-commissioned schools and apartment blocks. A chronic shortage of building materials is the biggest problem. Some parishes hire a staffer to forage throughout the country full time on the trail of everything from nails to cement. State-run factories are under orders to avoid selling materials to the Catholic Church, but the scavengers skillfully play on the religious feelings of bureaucrats: sometimes they hand out religious calendars and books to get a foot in the door. Occasionally they even stage...
...what suits them is, as far as the authorities are concerned, off limits. There are traffic reports of water buffalo jackknifed on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. There are appearances by a jungle fashion consultant, a little light in his combat boots, who advises the troops to eschew camouflage on the ground that if you are in a clash with the enemy, it is chic to clash with your surroundings too. Then there is the profoundly unintelligent intelligence officer who discerns no marijuana problem in Viet Nam because everyone has plenty of the stuff...