Word: undercutting
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...month ago, Prime Minister Charles Haughey and his Fianna Fáil (Band of Destiny) party seemed invincible. The polls showed them comfortably ahead of their opponents; Haughey, 55, had sprinted into the lead like an Irish steeplechaser in a field of Clydesdales. But then the jumps got higher. Undercut by the tensions in Northern Ireland and voter discontent over inflation (21%) and unemployment (11%), Haughey saw his lead evaporate. A strong finish by the opposition Fine Gael (Family of the Irish) party, headed by former Foreign Minister Garret Fitzgerald, 54, turned the contest into Ireland's closest election...
...pursuing another approach, one that had been successful in the budget battle. On Wednesday, Baker and Treasury Secretary Donald Regan held a well-publicized meeting with four members of the Conservative Democratic Forum, also known as the Boll Weevils because it comprises mainly Southern Democrats. This group had undercut Democratic Budget Committee Chairman Jim Jones by supporting the President's spending cuts. The Administration hoped that their visit might at least lead Rostenkowski to suspect that he too might be sandbagged...
...that would legally require the unanimous consent of provincial governments for some federal initiatives and allow provinces to opt out of others altogether. Both measures, of course, would ensure continued provincial leverage over the federal government?precisely what Trudeau is trying to avoid. Ironically, the premiers' initiative had been undercut the day before, when Quebec's supreme court became the second to approve the legality of Trudeau's proposed reforms. With a measure of renewed confidence, Trudeau went on television to denounce the whole provincial plan as "a victory for those who want to move Canada slowly toward disintegration...
...faces: one the anti-Giscard candidate, the other turned against François Mitterrand." Pundits insist that Marchais actually has a carefully masked preference for the re-election of the conservative Giscard over the leftist Mitterrand. His main reason, they reckon: the fear that a Socialist victory would severely undercut the influence of the smaller Communist Party and relegate it to a helpless neither-government-nor-opposition ambiguity...
Rafelson, however, refuses to let these betrayals unwind in their own frenetic fashion. Scenes of furious violence are undercut by his reluctance to leave the action before every angle has been explored. The result is a collection of brilliant scenes which don't seem to be related in time. Playwright David Mamet has taken most of the xenophobia and complication out of Cain's novel, and left in their places huge gaps for Rafelson to muse over. But one suspects Rafelson didn't even notice...