Sentence:  Throughout the month preceding Bruno Richard Hauptmann's electrocution, Carter had relentlessly goaded New Jersey's Governor Harold Giles Hoffman and his henchmen for playing <WSD>political football</WSD> with the... 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  Ongoing unproductive wrangling or posturing between political factions, resulting in failure to deal with an issue or problem in a decisive or appropriate way.