Word: problem
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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There was the problem that conservative Republicans never much liked or trusted the President. Among Republicans who did like him, especially those who respected his foreign policy skills, there was a risk the son would suffer by comparison. And out in the electorate at large, there were still people who remembered something they didn't like about the Bush brand, who had actually voted against it, who had the impression that the whole clan lived in a rarefied world where no one knows the price of milk and recessions don't happen. The last thing Bush wanted was to convey...
...also went after some of the expensive but dubious weapons programs he had supported in Congress. He canceled the Navy's $57 billion A-12 attack jet, a move that stunned the weapons industry, and denounced the Pentagon procurement chiefs in public for lying about weapons costs, a problem that Reagan's Defense Secretary, Caspar Weinberger, would never so much as acknowledge. On arms control, however, Cheney, a skeptic again, dug in his heels. In his memoirs, Baker says Cheney argued so consistently in early 1990 that the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe was a bad idea that eventually...
...problem now was that if he wanted to help his son get elected President, the best thing he could do was disappear for a while. There were lots of people outside Texas who didn't know whether it was the father running again or the son. An early 1998 poll revealed that 40% of the people backing Bush thought they were voting for the hero of the Gulf War. It was nice that Barbara had consistently topped the list of most popular women in the country and that the focus groups found people had warm memories of the clan--"Nice...
...gets worse: if the problem outside the family is that your father is President, the problem inside the family is that your father is perfect. A legendary Andover athlete, George Sr. went to war and became a hero, came home and became a husband, went to Yale and became a star: Phi Beta Kappa, baseball-team captain, fraternity president, Skull and Bones member--all in less than four years and always upholding the family code. At supper with parents Prescott and Dorothy, boys were expected to wear ties and use the right fork. There was lots of love...
...perform the ultimate act of synthesis: take his father's weaknesses--his sometimes excessive loyalty to people, his reluctance to fire or even confront anyone, his lack of feeling for what was uppermost in voters' minds and hearts--and apply his own instincts to solve the problem. It turned out W. was quite willing to be confrontational when it came to his father's honor--and survival. "I'm a warrior for my dad," he often says. And for once, he wasn't being asked to compete with his father; he was compensating...