Word: ballast
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...Bono writes the bulk of the lyrics, leaving bassist Clayton and drummer Mullen Jr. just a few empty bars to fill and plenty of leisure time. But U2's less famous members are hardly dead weight. In fact, their job is to be live weight--or at least ballast. They are steady, difficult to impress and maddeningly unromantic. "If we're in the studio trying to build the rocket," says Bono, "Edge is under the hood with his slide rule, I'm trying to become fuel, Larry is pointing out the reasons it'll never fly, and Adam's asking...
...private-school boys, launched by little Harvards like Andover and Groton, tend to glide through this year and to run aground later on strange reefs, foundering in alcohol, or sinking into a dandified apathy. But the institution demands of each man, before it releases him, a wrenching sacrifice of ballast...
Bedinger's change of heart seemed indicative of a tectonic shift in the Democratic electorate, a phenomenon deeper than the sudden waning of Dean's poll numbers--a movement toward sobriety and away from bombast, a search for a candidate with ballast. The easiest way for a politician to flaunt his gravitas is to show some interest in foreign policy, but this is risky for Democrats, who tend to believe that their core supporters care only about domestic issues. It is true that most of the questions I've heard at candidate meetings over the past few weeks have been...
Their first big coup: bringing on board investment wizard Warren Buffett, whom Schwarzenegger described as "the greatest investor ever, my mentor and my hero." Having Buffett advise on economic development lends intellectual ballast to the campaign. But it did little to reassure conservative Republicans, whose votes could well be split by other candidates in the race. Buffett has donated primarily to Democrats--including Hillary Clinton--in the past and has criticized President Bush's tax cuts as a handout for the rich. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last week, Buffett committed nothing short of heresy by suggesting...
...uranium story puffed up so huge? It wouldn't have been a very big deal without the deepening crisis in Iraq. But it also has ballast because it clarifies an aspect of George W. Bush's essential character--specifically, the problem he has with telling the truth. I am not saying Bush is a liar. Lying is witting: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." This is weirder than that. The President seems to believe that wishing will make it so--and he is so stupendously incurious that he rarely makes an effort to find the truth...