Word: salesman
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...17th-floor office suite before a portrait of himself, commissioned and autographed by former Vietnam prisoners of war, so he could * say, "I don't think the POWS would have given me this if they thought what I had been doing for them was a publicity stunt." Like a salesman whose primary product is his own reputation -- as it was, in a sense, when he created EDS, the computer-services firm that made his fortune -- Perot hates adverse comment. He remembers the tiniest unintended factual errors by reporters and delights in haranguing them, and anyone else in earshot, about them...
Ross Perot is fundamentally a superb salesman. So superb that it amounts to a form of genius. Over the years, he has become far more sophisticated in his analysis of political issues, but he retains the glib salesman's tendency to reduce complex realities to catchy slogans. In the old days, he advocated, as a cure for poverty, teaching the Boy Scout Oath -- to do my best, to do my duty, to God and to my country -- to every child in the ghetto. Let's face it, it's not sufficient...
What does this have to do with Reed, a 43-year-old pilot and machine-tool salesman who now lives in Moorpark, Calif.? He claims that in 1983 North recruited him to go to Mena to work with Seal and help train contra pilots. He also says North asked him to donate a Piper airplane to the contras and then report the plane as stolen so that insurance would cover his loss. Later that year, Reed and his wife Janis received a $33,000 insurance payment for the Piper. He says he quit the contra effort in August 1987 after...
...hand, to be one of the U.S. Attorneys or FBI agents who for six years had tried and tried again to scratch the Teflon Don. Each time the elusive leader of the nation's most powerful crime family persuaded the jury he was nothing more than a misunderstood plumbing salesman. But this time the government's case looked perfect. The witnesses did not lose their memories on the stand. The tapes were clear. The underboss spilled the grim details. The jury was protected. "The Don is covered with Velcro," said the assistant director of the FBI's New York office...
...them. "The recovery -- yeah, they announced it the other day," scoffs Tom Barrows, 57, who runs an office-supply shop in Atlanta. "It was good they told me, because I didn't know. I'm not seeing any turnaround or new confidence." Concurs Robert Deck, 48, a Michigan steel salesman: "Nobody's carrying any inventory. If you get an order, it's just enough to get them through that...