Word: wonk
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...showbiz skills have eclipsed policy savvy as chief prerequisites for national politics, and politicians have changed their strategies as a result. This makes perfect sense to me. Only major caffeine abuse could keep me conscious through a policy guru's lecture on the tax code, but if the same wonk dons a pair of shades and blows a sax, I'll pay a cover charge. He might even get me to vote...
...testimony of the vice president's first witness, political scientist Kimball Brace, was breathtakingly inept: The bedraggled wonk spent most of his time on the stand fumbling with 40-year-old voting machines and inadvertently shaking handfuls of chads onto Judge Sauls' desk. By the time Bush attorney Phil Beck had finished his cross examination, Brace had failed to support his theory that there might be structural problems or inconsistencies with the left-hand side of the Votomatic voting machine. He'd also all but admitted there was no reason to doubt the canvassing boards' ability to count their...
...Wonk Wilts...
...trouble, and finally, set Gore up for a defeat. It was Bush, after all, who charmed voters, not Gore. It was Bush who managed to captivate with his easy laugh and his loose-limbed grace. Gore was stuck with the old caricature: A stiff, a robot, a typical policy wonk...
...this wonk business: I spoke with Gore in his hotel room the week before last. Having completed a day of Regis, Oprah, Saturday Night Live and the Al Smith dinner, and set to wake up at 5 a.m. to do the Today show, he stretched out and had a beer. It was close to midnight. He should have been exhausted. Instead, in answer to my questions, he sailed into exquisitely detailed, many-referenced and well-over-my-head explanations of the economy, the arms race and anything else his mind embraced...