Word: wisdoms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...passage of universal health-care legislation on Nov. 7, Rove’s analysis looks particularly foolish. The notion that the results of two local races constitute a national referendum on the president’s agenda is preposterous and is not in line with the conventional wisdom for off-year elections...
...cliché to say that by naming Clinton, Obama brought his most popular potential opponent into the tent. The conventional wisdom, too cynical by half, is that he thereby succeeded in neutering her, a theory bolstered by Clinton's reticence during her first nine months on the job, with special envoys like Mitchell and Richard Holbrooke doing the heavy lifting of diplomacy. But by naming Clinton, Obama also gave her great power, which cuts both ways: if she becomes dissatisfied with her role or the Administration's policies, she can become a torpedo aimed at the Oval Office. Colin Powell...
...defensive, and North Korea has said it will return to the six-party talks. Clinton argues, correctly, about the need for "strategic patience." But the only thing Obama really has to show for his efforts so far is a Nobel Prize for Potential and - no small thing - the wisdom to have refrained from doing anything so wildly stupid as invading Iraq. The President has been willing to use military force - the Predator drones that have decimated al-Qaeda's leadership testify to his lack of squeamishness - but this Administration is supposed to be about the efficacy of using subtler expressions...
...promptly dispatched a fresh general to implement it in June. But having received General Stanley McChrystal's grim assessment of the situation on the ground and his request for reinforcements, Obama has spent the past two months - as U.S. deaths in Afghanistan have reached historic highs - weighing the wisdom of both decisions. In Washington, backers of McChrystal and his manpower-intensive counterinsurgency strategy say delaying the dispatch of reinforcements endangers the mission, but those who are more skeptical of the military's ability to turn the situation around praise Obama's methodical approach, in hopes it will prevent Afghanistan from...
...While the wisdom of such lengthy study is subject to debate, not so the reality of the calendar. Time is either an ally or a foe of any commander. "You may have the watches," the Taliban like to say, "but we have the time." No one knows that as well as McChrystal. "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) - while Afghan security capacity matures - risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible," he wrote on Aug. 30. If, as some at the Pentagon expect, Obama won't decide...