Word: powers
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...affairs. He brings to the topic a mixture of nostalgia and estrangement. He inherited strong political yearnings; he idolized his blind maternal grandfather, Senator Thomas P. Gore, a populist Democrat from Oklahoma (who makes a cameo appearance in "The Golden Age"). But the young Vidal's firsthand glimpses of power as he accompanied his grandfather around Washington were eventually succeeded by the realization that he lacked the temperament to achieve such power himself. That is why his sympathy in his political novels goes out to history's losers, starting with Burr - betrayed, in Vidal's retelling, by the coldly ambitious...
...defeat, what does that make of the winners? This question hums throughout Vidal's historical series, particularly as it applies to the biggest winners, U.S. presidents. Burr casts both Jefferson and George Washington in a harsh light. "Lincoln" portrays its protagonist as almost diabolically unknowable in his use of power; "Empire" makes merry with the boisterously ambitious Theodore Roosevelt. Vidal's fiction strives mightily to transform the faces on the Mount Rushmore monument into rubble and scree...
...totally reject. Sanford's Aunt Caroline, a major character in "Empire" and "Hollywood," is a friend of the Roosevelts and a frequent guest at the White House. She is charmed by the President but also chilled by what she sees as his inexhaustible deviousness. "There is a curse on power," she blurts out to the First Lady. Mrs. Roosevelt replies, "Not when used for others, or so I like to think." And then Caroline's question: "Where does one's own self leave off and that of others begin...
...Vidal's big sprawling novel about America's transformation during and after World War II coats its ethical inquiries with plenty of narrative sweeteners: the sweep of history, celebrity walk-ons, conspiracy theories and reams of conversation, much of it witty, some lumbering. But the issue of power and who should hold it is never far from the surface. Sanford confronts the scheming and ambitious Congressman Clay Overbury, who also appeared in "Washington, D.C.," and asks, "Why must you be President?" To Overbury, the answer is obvious: "Some people are meant to be. Some are not. Obviously...
...with access to student's confidential files and a seat on Harvard's disciplinary body--the Administrative Board--senior tutors have the power to inflict a broad spectrum of punishments on students...