It makes a tangible difference.
One of the many pleasures here is Mann's gift for making tangible the intellectual disputes of the militarily inclined faction through juicy tales of infighting.
Far from it, the Pacific appears to be a theatre of superpower rivalry, nationalism, and disputed history; perhaps its most tangible shared culture is surfing.
Mr. Obama's trip is an attempt to reboot or refocus the relationship away from these disputes and de-emphasize the tangible goodies (for example, contracts) that politicians call "deliverables".
Like all labor disputes, the one-day strike by taxi drivers yesterday turned on tangible matters, in this case credit card machines, global positioning systems and the like.
Among the few tangible new agreements to come out of the meetings was a plan to resolve a dispute over Mexican trucking that had been an extremely sore point since passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
"Everything tangible is gone.
"Dinner is something tangible.
