Europeans argue that any overt steps to push Mr. Arafat aside will backfire and create sympathy for him.
Taking any overt steps to build a ticket would be a delicate process, because Mr. Cuomo is not likely to formally announce a candidacy anytime soon.
"The Fed will not take overt steps to scale back its asset purchases any time soon," Lou Crandall, chief economist at Wrightson ICAP, a New York-based financial research firm, wrote last week.
In his first speech as president today, Chen Shui-bian promised that unless the mainland attacked Taiwan, he would not declare independence, change the country's official name of "Republic of China," or take other overt steps to establish Taiwan's formal independence.
That left Ms. Maloney, who took office in 1993, as the only prominent Democrat who continued to take overt steps to enter the primary race, provoking such consternation among Ms. Gillibrand and her allies that Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. phoned the congresswoman to gauge how serious she was about pressing ahead with a campaign.
Here it is striking that we sometimes employ the present progressive in anticipation: 'Kieran is visiting the zoo next Thursday' sounds perfectly fine when said today, before I have taken any overt steps (see Falvey 2000 pp. 25 6; Thompson 2008, pp. 140 1; Moran and Stone 2009, pp. 145 6).
But the political content of our garden, and of our pigs and chickens, is overt: to step aside even a little from the vices of industrial agriculture.
George Bush has, for the first time, taken an overt protectionist step against China the popular scapegoat for job losses in America's industrial heartland.
Labour did not support David Cameron, and our country has taken no overt military steps to respond to Assad's brutality.
The Justice official reminded Comey's deputy about department policy regarding overt investigative steps before an election.
