And so, despite his reputation for smooth talk, Mr Clinton wasted opportunities in 1997 because his talk was inadequate.

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Fiennes himself plays the implacable general, who, unable to summon much love for the common people or to feign such feelings in smooth talk, is ejected from Rome.

NEWYORKER: Coriolanus

Moreover, the polyglot Mr Strauss-Kahn, fluent in German, English and Spanish, and with a (third) wife, Anne Sinclair, who until 1997 had her own political chat-show on television, was the perfect man to smooth-talk journalists and placate suspicious foreigners.

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Mr. Obama told radio talk-show host Michael Smerconish last week that his re-election will smooth over bad feelings.

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