The US president needs some substantive achievements, at home and abroad, on which to form a campaign platform - and he has a lot of work to do.
But for all his influence, the vice president seems destined to be remembered as much for his political shortcomings as for his substantive achievements.
Lost in the hype over Ross Perot are the substantive achievements George Bush has piled up as President.
PLO agreement to these terms would be a substantive achievement for U.S.-Israeli rejectionism.
The optical lesson is that a modest amount of substantive achievement can overcome a whole lot of stylistic failure.
Mr. Reagan's aides are playing down expectations that the meetings will produce substantive achievements.
Why the willingness to weaken his major substantive achievement?
And he will have a substantive achievement to point to on Monday, when he is scheduled to sign a free trade agreement with Singapore, Japan's first such pact with any nation.
All of this distracted from more substantive achievements.
To almost everyone in Louisiana politics, he is the most overpublicized man in American politics, a freshman state legislator without a substantive achievement who has nevertheless become a national figure.