Word: wonk
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...President's call for an independent Whitewater investigation temporarily quells the political outrage, but many people still think Clinton must be guilty of something because they know he isn't stupid. Here's a policy wonk well versed in every domestic issue that ever made a Sunday-morning talk show, a politician with near total recall of conversations and events from long ago, a meticulous record keeper capable of itemizing underwear donations to charity. Why, then, are so many vital Whitewater records missing? How is it possible that two respected lawyers like Bill and Hillary Clinton don't possess...
Ever since it was first outlined, President Clinton's health plan has been wonk heaven: a field day for number crunchers, policy analysts and all the sobersided types who use hand-held computers even though they know the figures anyway. Matthew Arnold wrote of ignorant armies clashing by night; the health- care discussion has been conducted by highly knowledgeable armies clashing on the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour...
...that do not involve deciding that someone may die sooner than if the treatment had been given. To accept the need for rationing involves a certain pessimism -- the embracing of a zero-sum system where the only way to pay for one thing is to drop another. The pragmatic wonk in Clinton might want to wrestle with it; but the optimist in him, and his political instincts, will ensure that he will try to to keep it from becoming a focus of debate. He will probably succeed in this, since his plan is designed in such a way that...
...policy-wonk heaven," said Bergthold, who noted that years of health-care ideas were being dusted off and hotly debated. And the details came together. Benefits moved fast: at a Saturday-morning session in the Roosevelt Room, a jogging suit-clad Clinton ordered Magaziner to come up with a standard benefits package as good as or better than that of the typical worker, which meant the plan had to emphasize preventive care, including physicals and baby checkups, and some controversial procedures like abortion. But it would exclude cosmetic surgery, eyeglasses and borderline therapies, such as weight reduction...
...more than 20 years, Congressman and military wonk Les Aspin fantasized about becoming Secretary of Defense. Now, as he sits behind the huge desk in room 3E880, the top office in the Pentagon, Aspin's dream job has become something of a nightmare. His problem is in the timing. Rather than building an empire as his cold-war predecessors did, he has the task of bringing the Pentagon down to size and opening it up to diversity. That means smaller budgets, fewer troops, less new hardware, a streamlined bureaucracy and the possible integration of gays into the service. Making matters...