Word: trimmer
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Jimmy Carter won with a combination of grit, driving ambition, daring if flawed political planning and a generous measure of good luck. As a campaigner, he struck many voters as more enigmatic than charismatic, as more of a trimmer than a visionary-and perhaps not really likable enough. In the end, he did not so much win the presidency as avoid losing...
Electronic Gizmo. The most obvious step was to make cars shorter and lighter. Trimmer cars can be driven by smaller engines that drink less gas per mile. Technology was also refined. Emission-control devices, always the enemies of fuel economy, were built in, not slapped on, making for more efficient engines. Ignitions were more precisely tuned. GM's Delco-Remy division developed an electronic gizmo called MISAR, which monitors driving conditions and adjusts ignition-spark timing for optimal performance (for now, only the Oldsmobile Toronado sports the device at GM, although Chrysler has installed a similar device on several...
...austerity could produce some benefits, not so obvious at first, but no less long-ranging in their impact. Romantic asceticism would no longer be a viable philosophical alternative, and middle-class youths like myself would no longer feel compelled to renounce their roots. Americans would be a thinner, trimmer breed and hikes in the woods would supersede spectator activities such as horse races and the cinema...
...some outraged citizens. A cautious, scrupulous politician, he rarely speaks out on an issue until he has absorbed all the facts. He was not a perfervid critic of Nixon during Watergate, and on occasion defended the beleaguered President. For this reason, he is sometimes portrayed as a political trimmer without sufficient principle at a time when ethical purity seems to be valued above everything else...
...first time in 25 years I'm seeing the world without an alcoholic haze," Richard Burton boasted last week. And all because wife Elizabeth bet her convivial Welshman that he couldn't abstain for three months. A trimmer Burton has not only won the wager (a kiss or something; he forgets), but has stretched his dry period to nearly six months. Lest his public misunderstand his sober ways, Burton begged his interviewer: "Please don't make me out to be against alcohol. I'll get all sorts of letters from the temperance people, and I certainly...