Word: wonking
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With his carefully cultivated image as a wonk, Greenspan has been heard to say that he is a prop in the long-running political theater that is Washington. But he is also clearly an actor--one of Washington's shrewdest power brokers. He plays politics just as he plays his favorite sport, tennis, in which he is known on occasion to switch his racquet from his right hand to his left in the middle of a point to avoid using his weaker backhand. So it was that during the 1990s the onetime adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford...
...other kinds of corrections to make. He was seen by progressives here, like in the U.S. and elsewhere in the West, as the symbol of the last papacy's doctrinal rigidity. To those in step with Pope John Paul's theological stance, Ratzinger was part guru and part policy wonk on the most fundamental Church questions...
...turns out you don't have to be a policy wonk to join that élite cadre of international-affairs buffs, the Council on Foreign Relations. You can just play one in the movies. The council, which counts Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney and Henry Kissinger among its more than 4,000 members, has just accepted some Hollywood heavies into its ranks. In a "recognition that foreign affairs goes beyond government to the world of culture," says a spokeswoman, the think tank and publisher awarded memberships last month to applicants WARREN BEATTY, a Senator in Bulworth; Michael Douglas, the leader...
...permanently moored above his unkempt locks. He does not make people feel comfortable. He does not have - as, even after Iraq, Tony Blair still does - the capacity to convince the solid, middle-class folk of southern England that he is one of them. He is, finally, more policy wonk than politician. Time after time, he and Blair have had rifts over policy or presentation or - if you believe what you read in the papers - over Blair's promises of who would do what job when. And who wins each time? Well: Who's the occupant of 10 Downing Street...
...While he is often described as a thinker, he's not one to dwell on the abstract. He's more of an analyst and problem solver: as Americans say, a policy wonk. Still, several themes have endured. First, there's enormous self-belief; Latham "backs himself" and would like others to aspire to better things. Second, he believes in Labor - not just as a political party, but as a movement - "a movement that needs to energize its base and create new causes and constituencies," as he wrote in From the Suburbs. These two streams come together in his desire...