The era of low-risk leadership is about to end with some bolder strokes on policy, personnel and party reform.
But all these subsidiary marks of favour are thrown into the background by a master stroke of high policy which involves vast changes in administrative organisation.
Aides say Mr. Kerry will paint the broad strokes of his policy agenda: his plans to create jobs, to broaden access to health insurance, to wean the nation from foreign oil and to roll back tax cuts for the wealthy.
Given today's aberrant prices it would be a stroke of courageous public policy for the Energy Department to announce the release of 100 million barrels from the reserve to counter what is clearly an artificial and bloated price of oil.
We call them "stroke of the pen" policies because they are easy to implement and cost little or nothing.
In the latest setback, on July 29th, Matthias Platzeck, the popular premier of Brandenburg and a former chairman of the SPD, said that he would resign later this month because he is too ill to continue after suffering a stroke in June.In terms of policy, all outcomes are uninspiring, says Michael Hüther at IW Cologne, a think tank, varying between "major or minor disasters".
The strength of the evidence relating to TIA as a predictor of ischemic stroke has contributed to the development of policy and organisation of services in recent years.
Then there's the FDA's painting with a broad stroke policy of banning gay men from donations out of a concern for the potential transmission of HIV to the prospective mother.
So the battle will be fought less over the minutiae of policy but in broad strokes about Europe itself.
A President's ability to make policies with the stroke of a pen is a good thing if you support those policies.
Mr. Mugabe's all-encompassing power, they argued, had allowed him to lead Zimbabwe into chaos by seizing land, stacking the courts with his allies and making disastrous economic policy with the stroke of a pen.
