Word: overreaching
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Everything about the moment invited Bill Clinton to overreach. In the great vaulted nave of the Washington National Cathedral, television lights chased away the shadows and 4,700 people leaned forward in their pews as the President began his eulogy for Commerce Secretary Ron Brown. Seven days had passed since the plane crash in Croatia that killed Brown and 34 others, days filled with the high emotionalism of flag-draped coffins and sobbing families, and during that time, Clinton stretched his verbal gifts to the limit. At Dover Air Force Base when the dead came home, he gave the speech...
...dafter masterpieces of Western art, rich in overreach, Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen is an obvious target for takeoffs of all sorts. The latest is Das Barbecu, which arrived last week off-Broadway after having been developed in several regional theater productions. Concentrating on the last opera, Gotterdammerung, the show is set in oil-rich Texas. Not a bad idea: like Valhalla, Texas was built by the iron whim of wealthy men. Jim Luigs, who wrote the book and lyrics, sees the gods as feuding, singing cowboys. Five exceedingly busy people manage to rush through 30 parts...
...enough to permit this, it probably doesn't require intervention in the first place, and a previously announced exit date merely invites troublemakers to outwait us. You distrust the United Nations, but you should not blame it for American errors. Lately the U.N., with American acquiescence, has tended to overreach, acting like the world government it is not; still the U.N. remains useful, not as an enforcer but as a facilitator of peace. We should work with it, but not under it. Also, we must invent new international structures, including new regional groupings and an expanded, redirected (and possibly renamed...
Another reason is that, on live TV, in front of God and everybody, reporters, like most people, want to be seen as good at their work. So, often, they overreach...
Ever since he started the Hearstian buying spree that made his News Corp. the world's most diverse media company, rivals have been waiting for Rupert Murdoch to overreach and fall. They mocked his ambition to become the first press lord to bestride three continents: Europe, North America and his native Australia, where his holdings account for 60% of total daily-newspaper circulation. They belittled his free-spending plunge into book publishing. They scoffed when he spent more than $2 billion for seven U.S. TV stations, plus a movie studio to provide programs, for his high-risk start...