Word: frontierisms
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Like the Nixon Administration overall, Laird marches under no grand ensign. After seven months, the White House still has no catch phrase to match New Frontier or Great Society. Laird's Pentagon has no strategy label comparable to "flexible response" in Robert McNamara's day or even the "bigger bang for a buck" of Charles E. Wilson's time. Like Nixon himself, Laird seems unencumbered by?some would say unequipped with?any particularly abiding philosophy. He is the only Secretary of Defense to come from Congress. Half his life ? he will be 47 next week ? was spent...
Americans once demanded a lot less of their national public figures than they do now. In the frontier days, a politician often proved himself by demonstrating his capacity for drink, women and duels. Alexander Hamilton was able to continue his career in politics even after publicly acknowledging that he had paid blackmail to a woman. The fact that Andrew Jackson killed a man in a duel, defending the honor of his wife, probably helped him get elected President. During his four years in the White House, Franklin Pierce often drank himself into a stupor, but, says Historian John Roche...
Gradually, frontier lustiness was replaced by a Victorian sense of decorum and a growing belief at least in the surface dignity of politics. Politicians had to be more careful. Shortly after Grover Cleveland received the Democratic presidential nomination in 1884, a newspaper revealed that he had been supporting an illegitimate child for several years. Distraught party leaders asked him what to do. "Tell the truth," he doughtily replied. The truth scarcely satisfied Republicans, who improvised several more scandals about Cleveland and made the most of a campaign ditty: "Ma, ma, where's our pa? Gone to the White House...
...perfection has its limits. The man entrusted with high public office today operates under unprecedented strain: he may well feel personally responsible for the survival of much of the human race in the nuclear age. More than ever, he needs the kind of private release that the open frontier once provided. A successful politician often possesses immense energy that needs to be released. The obscure private citizen can lose control of himself in public. Nobody but his friends will care. The man in public life must exercise iron control...
...likely location for the opening battle is the Chinese region of Sinkiang. Occupying almost one-sixth of China's area, Sinkiang contains several volatile ingredients. Unlike other disputed border areas farther east, where the Amur and Ussuri rivers create a natural boundary, the 1,500-mile Sinkiang-Soviet frontier in many stretches is only vaguely demarcated. In addition, the area is the site of one of the most tempting targets in all of China: the nuclear testing grounds...