Word: statesman
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...entire Politburo and Central Committee stepped down as well. Asked about German unification at Sunday's press conference, Gorbachev said some questions must be left for "history" to decide and cautioned against doing "anything to accelerate these changes artificially." That call for prudence seemed ironic coming from the statesman who had done more than any other in this half of the century to speed up the process of history, including the transformation of Germany...
...critics, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl has been the perpetually shrinking statesman. Despite his formidable physical size, the Bonn leader has been derided for a political ineptitude that has time and again diminished his stature in West Germany and among Europe's leaders. Lacking the mettle of Margaret Thatcher, the imperial hauteur of Francois Mitterrand, and the wiles of his rival and coalition partner, Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Kohl has made his mark as the Continent's veteran political survivor...
...Boston, Historian Hugh Thomas (Lord Thomas of Swynnerton) said the world now is a "tessellated pavement without cement." He was quoting something Edmund Burke said about Charles Townshend, a brilliant but erratic 18th century British statesman. Not bad, but somewhat mandarin. The audience had to remember, or look up, tessellation, which is a mosaic of small pieces of marble, glass or tile. This age, thinks Lord Thomas, is a mosaic of fragments, with nothing to hold them together. Is it an age of brilliant incoherence? Yes. It is also an age of incoherent stupidity...
...consider him a very courageous and outstanding statesman who does great things...
...fisted, dwarfing the islands"). But the very unity of this collection produces a sameness. The reader begins to wonder, Doesn't Minot know anyone who is married, or older than thirtysomething? Doesn't she ever look beyond these modish urban lofts and restaurants? Henry Kissinger once remarked of Singaporean statesman Lee Kuan Yew that he needed a larger country for his talents. Minot, a writer to watch, needs a larger subject...