Word: wonk
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...motorcade sped through leafy Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, in late September, Al Gore leaned against his orthopedic back pillow, drank bottled water and reflected on the human spirit and his newfound sense of self. How is it that the wooden-tongued policy wonk of 1988 has emerged as an introspective spokesman for the inner child, an icon of the new manhood? Says Gore simply: "I found the connection between my head and my heart...
...Edgily)) No, no, all it means is I've never had a grandchild come to me and say that someone named Wonk...
...Gore, 44, is the younger), they have been in many ways so similar, so driven, so high-test-scores smart, so blue-suit sincere that it once seemed inevitable that their ambitions for the White House would collide. Consider the dualities: both are new-ideas moderates with a policy wonk's love of the intricacies of complex issues; both boast blue-ribbon educational pedigrees and are not ashamed to show it; both are Southern Baptists who married strong, assertive blond women; and both, having achieved political success early in life, have never made a secret of their zeal for higher...
...aware of all of these issues, I would like to wonk the audience on the head with a bat, I send the actors down as puppets in Dream Play and had them manipulated...
...essays in Beyond the Boom vary considerably in quality. By far the liveliest is David Brooks' "Portrait of a Washington Policy Wonk," a dead- on, deadpan satire about how legislative aides and assistants to Cabinet secretaries can rise above their lowly station. Johnston, in "Break Glass in Case of Emergency," effectively skewers yuppiedom's jejune New Age spirituality. And Teachout, in "A Farewell to Politics," argues plausibly that the great ideological battles of the '90s will be fought over culture, a word he defines broadly enough to include abortion; family policy; and "sensitivity fascism" in American academia (which he describes...