Word: undercutting
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...taken root in the hopes of fighting things through, turning things around, preserving the basic assumption that compromise will produce progress. Informed tinkering would work if circumstances and politicians were not conspiring just now to attack the foundation on which America's education is built. Seeing an institution undercut just as it seems about to attack its problems is doubly tragic; Reagan, it seems, knew just when to bring in the bulldozers...
...White House bureaucracy to the more efficient Baker. "This place needs a manager who can handle 25 balls in the air at one time," said a White House aide. "Meese couldn't do it." Meanwhile, Deaver emerged as the President's No. 1 confidant and troubleshooter. Meese undercut his own strength at the White House by traveling so much, giving speeches and attending G.O.P. fund raisers. During last year's tense Senate vote on the sale of AWACS-equipped planes to Saudi Arabia, for instance, Meese was out of town, as he was when Reagan was making...
...State Department. The Secretary ran through a long list of complaints, citing specifically the private meetings that the National Security Adviser had held with Saudi Arabia's Ambassador to Washington. In Haig's view, those meetings constituted a White House attempt to conduct backchannel dealings and undercut him in foreign policy. He also complained that Vice President George Bush had been sent as head of the U.S. delegation to memorial services for the late King Khalid in Saudi Arabia, and that he had been cut off from cables addressed to the White House from the President...
Shultz's business experience tends to undercut the criticism that a man with no formal diplomatic background was chosen for the top foreign policy job in an Administration already woefully lacking in international expertise. "Relative to the rest of the Administration, Shultz has had experience," says former Senator J. William Fulbright. "He brings to the office an enormous personal acquaintanceship with heads of state around the world," says New York's Citicorp Chairman Walter Wriston...
...trio of Meese, Baker and Deaver was also still smarting from the fact that the Israeli invasion had undercut Reagan's trip to Europe, where he was trying to demonstrate U.S. leadership in the world. Says one bitter Reagan adviser: "We begged Begin to hold off on anything until after Reagan returned to Washington, and he didn't even give us the time...