Word: realist
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...both a nationalist and an internationalist. He loved Hollywood movies - as a young man he went to Los Angeles, studying acting at the Pasadena Playhouse - and he learned as much from their robust pace as he did from the gritty humanism of Italian neo-realist films and the romantic sweep of Indian cinema in its postwar Golden Age. He was both an art-house auteur and a director of popular hits, at least in the Arab crescent. He made political points, often different ones in different movies, but his didacticism was typically overwhelmed by his irrepressible urge to entertain...
...major influence behind John McCain's most ambitious foreign-policy address to date, delivered in late March in Los Angeles. It would be a mistake, however, to dismiss him as a mouthpiece for McCain or as just another American neoconservative, for he is neither. Kagan is a realist, to be sure, reminiscent of earlier public intellectuals such as Raymond Aron, Reinhold Niebuhr and Walter Lippmann. The Return of History clocks in at a mere 100 pages. Its style is conversational, and it feels more like a breezy lecture than a weighty foreign-policy tome. Still, its message is sober...
...believes that the realities of economic hardship can quash the politics of hope, that American voters will choose cheaper gas before inspiration, that stadium-sized crowds will never matter as much as the price of milk. In an era of tight wallets, she believes the fight of a hardscrabble realist is more powerful than the potential of a visionary...
...Obama isn't the only candidate drawing careful scrutiny in Tehran. Some Iranians are also intrigued by John McCain, pointing out that Henry Kissinger, a "realist" McCain adviser, recently called for "direct negotiations" between the U.S. and Iran. Nonetheless, many consider McCain a hawk and fear his experiences as an American POW in the Vietnam War may hardwire him for hostility towards revolutionary governments. All Iranians seem aware of McCain's "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" Beach Boys imitation, and many take it as an indication of his inclinations. Yet many anti-regime Iranians are praying - albeit quietly...
...result of all this is that he is as rigorous and detailed a realist as you could hope to meet. His life has never allowed him the luxury of talking abstractly or wishfully from a mountaintop. He follows the news more closely than many journalists do and cheerfully confessed to me more than a decade ago that he is "addicted" to the bbc World Service broadcast every morning. When he speaks around the world, one of his favorite lines is "Dream-nothing!" or some other expression to stress that instead of looking outside ourselves for help or inspiration, we should...