Try ‘Lusty’ or ‘Strapping’

Election night: Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell pops up beside red and blue maps on every channel to say that voting in his state is “robust.” Also, the race. Ditto for democracy.

By morning, the nation can agree on just one thing: “Robust,” an adjective once reserved for profits, sales and coffee aroma, has become the most ubiquitous and annoying word of Campaign 2004.

Major U.S. news sources used “robust” 1,486 times during this election -- 499 times more than they did in 2000 and almost 1,000 more times than in 1996. In Congress, “robust” was used 257 times, compared with 197 times in 2000. (Research shows that over the last seven years, senators have been 7 1/2 times more likely to say “robust” than their House colleagues.)

President Bush declared tax cuts robust, and Vice President Dick Cheney said Saddam Hussein had a robust nukes program. Congress debated “Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrators,” a.k.a. bunker busters. The Chicago Tribune noted Bush’s “robust” margin in Florida, and The Times’ Michael Kinsley defended “Crossfire’s” “robust” debates. Opinion’s editors even let the word slip into today’s cover story. Let’s hope it’s the last use of this virility-bolstering buzzword until 2008.

-By John Tyrrell and Brendan Buhler