Word: spinelessness
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...minds of some scholars, he was a mediocre President, indifferent to the civil rights movement, spineless in the face of McCarthyism, slow of wit and out of touch with the currents of upheaval swirling beneath the calm surface of the 1950s. To more and more students of the era, however, Dwight David Eisenhower was a canny leader who brilliantly outmaneuvered subordinates and statesmen. Author and Biographer Stephen E. Ambrose can claim a seat in each camp...
...Wahl, who plays her lover, had embraced Torn's wigged-out wickedness of spirit, they might have helped turn the film into the black comedy it sometimes seems to want to become. Still, the script keeps waffling off into farce, romance and just plain improbability; anything spineless to please. And the often estimable Don Siegel brings little conviction, comic or otherwise, to the picture...
...granting the Saudis their military wish-list (and the American advisers who must inevitably follow), the United States will be making a spineless capitulation to the world's leading oil-exporter. The sale won't help the Saudis, who don't need more weapons; won't help the Israelis, who will feel compelled to demand more arms themselves, and won't help Americans, who will be slipping further along the road to international confrontation and possible disaster...
...gone soft; with An Unmarried Woman, he finally arrived at his present state, where he sentimentalizes the mildly eccentric, celebrates sweet-spirited rebelliousness and generally goofs off on promising themes. The result has been a series of truly enervating movies, of which Willie and Phil is but the most spineless. Its three leading players do what they can with the material, but their task is quite hopeless...
Within her party, she faces problems. Her Cabinet is seriously split between her own brand of doctrinaire Tory ideologues and the more pragmatic traditional conservatives. Cabinet meetings are often prickly. Ministers who make a weak case or are deemed "wet" (spineless) are sharply chastised. In extreme irritation, Thatcher has a habit of slapping her palms against the green baize tabletop. In the House of Commons, her majority of 43 harbors rebellious, hard-line backbenchers who demand tougher restrictions on trade unions and more ruthless cuts in public spending...