n.
Collective noun referring to the relatively youthful and inexperienced staffers in Bill Clinton's administration.
Example Citation:
Well, I don't—you know, they won fair and square. But, no, you—I don't feel any—any vindictiveness in my heart towards President Clinton or to Vice President Gore, none. Absolutely none. They hammered the hell out of me in their war room and in their Stephanopouli, and all of this kind of stuff.
—George Herbert Walker Bush, quoted in Katie Couric, "Former president George Bush discusses his life," Today Show, October 5, 1999
Earliest Citation:
Clinton, who rose with the help of mentors, has an ingratiating air with his elders. But along with servants jittery over dismissals, Clinton's young aides have the nervous manner of children who expect their father to blow up at any moment. It is disconcerting when the President dresses down his rosy-cheeked aides in public, and when he sends the Stephanopouli out to defend his messy past, about which they know little.
—Maureen Dowd, "The little people problem," The New York Times, April 17, 1994
Category:
New words. 2013.