Word: wordly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Thus the Democratic Party chairman and Michael Dukakis' campaign manager defeated two barons of the press in convention week's favorite game: pin the tail on the donkey. The Democrats' renunciation of the word liberal annoys others besides journalists. It's annoying to believers in truth-in- advertising. Michael Dukakis, in most respects, is a classic postwar American liberal. It's annoying to Democrats who want their party to stand for something less bloodless than "pragmatism" and "competence...
Clearly the word is out of fashion. In the 1950s the term progressive was a euphemism used by Americans who didn't want to admit to being Communists. Today it's used by people who don't want to admit to being liberals. In the radical 1960s, when my ears got their political training, "liberal" was a semicomic term of abuse similar to the wonderful British political insult "wet." It meant wishy-washy, ineffectual, irrelevant. To those ears, today's sinister variants such as "ultraliberal" sound bizarre. In the 1970s conservatives were still claiming prissily that they were the "true...
Well, it's only a word. If the essence of liberalism is secure even from Reagan, does it make any difference that no one wants to be called a liberal anymore? Yes. Politics has always contained a large dollop of hypocrisy. But under Reagan, hypocrisy has swollen to the point that it covers many of the most important questions politics is supposed to treat. And that has real consequences. America's mountainous debts are a concrete expression of the nation's determination to enjoy liberalism without acknowledging it, and therefore without paying...
Reagan says "You'll never hear that 'L' word--liberal--from" Dukakis, and he's right. Dukakis says this election "isn't about ideology." George McGovern isn't on the ballot this year. And George Bush won't be facing Fritz Mondale come November. He'll be facing a competent, hardworking statesman not far from the mainstream of American politics. Republicans won't win by pinning labels on Dukakis...
...rest of the convention, the Republicans will try to paint Dukakis as an ultraliberal who is soft on crime and lacks foreign policy experience. They'll also bash Massachusetts, and they'll take a few cheap shots at Harvard liberals. And they'll use the "L" word...