Word: wonk
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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During this period, Clinton's religion found a dual expression, matching in some ways the tension in his personality between his populist leanings as an Elvis Presley-loving son of a small-town nurse and his intellectual elitism as a Rhodes scholar and full-time wonk. He developed an intense relationship with the Rev. W.O. Vaught of Immanuel Baptist, a biblical scholar known for his erudition, whose sermons were drawn directly from Scripture. Friends of both men say Clinton, who lost his father to a car accident before he was born, was drawn to him for his paternal and nonjudgmental...
...fact, the style of the three fits in well with the somewhat technocratic, efficient and educated image the Clinton camp has projected in the past, Mankiw said, although he did not accept the characterization "policy wonk...
...Strobe, Clinton gains a fellow wonk, someone with whom he can continue to talk about the mysteries of this nation's superpower rival. "He always had a voracious curiosity about the Soviet empire and the problems it posed to the world," says Strobe. "And I always suspected that it was in part because he hoped that one day he would be dealing with them." TIME will miss Strobe, but our loss will be the country's gain...
Bill Clinton has also been known to party hearty, but in his soul he may be a wonk. He is no more afraid to be square in his musical taste (his favorite sax player -- Kenny G?) than Maya Angelou was to be passionate, politically correct and perfectly understood in her Inaugural Day poem. At 13 balls that night, Clinton was like the college grind who drops in on frat bashes the night before the exam to show he's one of the guys, then sneaks back to his dorm to cram. Perhaps there is as much Nixon...
...friends in the intellectual elite and his friends in Arkansas. "He has tried to present the ideas of the elite to ordinary people, and he has tried to present ordinary people to the elite," observes Ralph Whitehead, journalism professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. "He can speak wonk, and he can speak American." But that is too rare a skill in his present circle. "On the campaign trail, he had Jim Carville, who had no trouble making himself understood in barrooms. He needs people in the Administration who will do the same...