Earlier this year, a radio station posted a billboard near the site of the Clinton Presidential Center featuring the unmistakable profile of the 42nd president playing his trademark saxophone.
Its rock ‘n’ roll message: “Carry on Wayward Son.”
Clinton, born at Hope and reared at Hot Springs, is simultaneously the most famous and most infamous Arkansan in history. The impact of his eight-year presidency on Arkansas’ economy, image and collective psyche is impossible to quantify.
“He brought national prestige to the state. People don’t have to ask now where Arkansas is,” said James L. “Skip” Rutherford, a longtime Clinton friend and president of the William J. Clinton Presidential Library Foundation.
Even as his successor’s eventful first term enters its final months, Clinton commands more media attention than any previous former president. His polarizing personality — and that of his wife, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton — remain powerful forces for the Democratic Party in its quest to regain the White House. His unique talents and self-destructive foibles set new benchmarks for political success and scandal, and it is still unclear how history will view his administration.
In Arkansas, his legacy is already concrete. The $160 million Clinton Presidential Library will open later this year. Whether it draws the hundreds of thousands of annual tourists that its backers predict remains to be seen, but it has undoubtedly turned up the heat on the redevelopment of the east end of Little Rock’s downtown.
Even if he hadn’t gone on to the most powerful position in the world, Bill Clinton had plenty of opportunity to make his mark on Arkansas as one of the state’s longest-serving governors.
Clinton’s tenure was noted for his emphasis on education.
“He set higher standards, expanded the curriculum and conveyed to the state why education was important,” Rutherford said.
Margaret Scranton, who teaches a course on the Clinton presidency at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, concurs.
Clinton’s push for education reform brought about a greater appreciation for embracing new ideas and concepts, Scranton said. Like Gov. Mike Huckabee today, Clinton faced both inertia and opponents in trying to bring education reform along, she said.
Although he didn’t win on all of the issues he wanted, he changed the nature of the political debate by making new ideas acceptable rather than radical, Scranton said.
Under Clinton, the state increased teacher salaries, required teacher competency exams and made admission to high school conditional on successful completion of a standardized examination. When he left the governor’s office to become president in 1993, Arkansas had the highest high school graduation rate of any Southern state.
Another lasting impact as governor, Rutherford said, was his strong commitment to civil rights and the full participation of all Arkansans.
“He continued a line of progressive governors,” Rutherford said.
“He set the example,” Scranton said, of a governor willing to bring African-Americans into the center of power.
Clinton was elected governor in 1978 at the age of 32, after having served a term as the state’s attorney general. His first two-year term was a learning experience. Clinton jumped in as a liberal activist wanting to change a basically conservative state. He succeeded only in angering the state’s political and business establishments.
There was an uprising against an unpopular motor vehicle tax. There was anger over the escape of Cuban prisoners detained in Fort Chaffee. There was criticism of his wife’s decision, later abandoned, to continue using her maiden name.
When the outgoing Frank White came along on the 1980 Republican ticket, Clinton went down to a narrow defeat. It could have been the political swan song of a lesser political talent.
Out of office, Clinton went to work to right the things that led to his defeat. He offered a televised apology for his past mistakes and asked for forgiveness. He adopted a more moderate, pragmatic and business-friendly approach and made amends with the state’s political players. He became the first defeated governor to regain office in the 1982 general election, his first experience as “the Comeback Kid.”
Having learned some hard lessons about the art of political compromise, Clinton used his masterful one-on-one people skills and the necessity of running for re-election every two years to become one of the greatest campaigners the state — and the nation — would ever see.
“He is a very complicated political figure,” Scranton said. “His range is so extensive. He’s always learning and investing in knowledge, yet he’s very personable.”
The Presidency
While right-wing talk show hosts continue to blame Clinton for more misdeeds than anyone could have accomplished in two lifetimes, the left wing thinks he crippled the Democratic Party by choosing to declare “the era of big government is over.”
But his genius, honed in a state where conservative and Democrat were not mutually exclusive, was finding the center and giving it broad support by moving both moderate liberals and moderate conservatives to it. And in doing that, he was far more successful than those on the right or left are wont to admit.
“He elevated the expectations of the people,” Rutherford said. “It was the American dream — a young man growing up in rural Arkansas to become president.”
Clinton’s opponent, President George Bush, had enjoyed stratospheric popularity after he rallied international cooperation to expel Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Army from tiny Kuwait in the 1991 conflict that became known as the Gulf War. But Clinton’s campaign focused on issues closer to home with the unofficial slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid.”
While the nation’s underlying economic health during the Clinton administration is the subject of much second-guessing, this much is certain: The U.S. posted the lowest unemployment rate in modern times, created more than 22.9 million jobs, enjoyed the least inflation in 30 years, achieved the highest rate of home ownership in history and witnessed declining crime rates and reduced welfare roles. He proposed the first balanced budget in decades and turned a deficit into a budget surplus.
“It took a lot of political and intellectual courage as well as discipline and hard decisions” to balance the budget, Scranton said. “It sounded so Republican, he alienated many in his own party,” but he gained the confidence of Wall Street and the Federal Reserve, she said. He helped reform the way government worked, she said, by not going on spending binges.
In the area of race relations, Clinton included people at the table that had never been included before, Rutherford said, much as he had done while serving as governor.
Other successes included legislation to improve education, protect jobs of parents who must care for sick children, restrict handgun sales and strengthen environmental rules.
Scranton said Clinton was part of a set of new world leaders who had to deal with the changing role of the post-welfare state and redefine modern democracies.
There were big failures along the way too, most notably a radical health care reform plan shepherded by Hillary Clinton. Although the plan failed miserably to win popular or political approval, Scranton said it made the issue of health care a standard part of political campaigns.
“His path-breaking made universal coverage an everyday term,” she said.
His entire presidency was dogged by scandal and pseudo-scandal — starting with questions over a real estate investment when he was still Arkansas’ attorney general and including incidents that came to be known as “Troopergate,” “Travelgate,” “Filegate” and, ultimately, “Monicagate.”
Clinton’s sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky and his dissembling when it was discovered brought ridicule and outrage — and it opened the door for his opponents to seek impeachment action against him in Congress in 1998. He was the first elected president in U.S. history to be impeached. He was tried by the Senate and found not guilty of the perjury and obstruction of justice charges brought against him.
The Lewinsky scandal preoccupied the nation for the remainder of his time in office. It is a testament to his crafty political skills that, after a televised apology for his astonishingly poor judgment in the Lewinsky affair, he continued to enjoy robust popular approval for his performance as president.
Scranton said the jury is still out on how those events and the arguments and issues that arose will impact the executive privilege of future presidents.
Stymied by a Republican-controlled Congress and the subject of incessant criticism by dogged ideological foes convinced that he must be guilty of something, Clinton turned his focus to the world scene. Overseas, Clinton was even more popular than he was in the United States, drawing large crowds when he traveled through South America, Europe, Russia, Africa and China, advocating freedom.
Clinton’s policy of using the American military force for humanitarian intervention was a combination of force and diplomacy, Scranton said.
Clinton’s economic foreign policy reflected increasing globalization and his belief that the United States should be active in the global community. Perhaps the best example of that is backing of the North American Free Trade Agreement, to the chagrin of the labor unions that make up a traditional Democratic base.
He successfully oversaw the expansion and redefining of NATO, an organization that had lost its mission with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Scranton said. Clinton dispatched peacekeeping forces to Bosnia as part of the redefining of NATO.
He also worked to move the Middle East peace process forward, although progress there has since disintegrated. Another success was the move to give China permanent trade partner status.
There also were failures in his foreign policy and persistent problems involving Bosnia, Haiti, the former Soviet Union, Somalia, Cuba, North Korea and Iraq.
Under Clinton, the United States bombed Iraq when Saddam Hussein stopped United Nations inspections for evidence of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. He advocated more open international trade and headed a worldwide campaign against drug trafficking.
The strong economy in the United States during his tenure also did a lot of good for the world economy and prevented instability, Scranton said.
The Gravy Train
When he was elected president, many Arkansans had high hopes of a gravy train of big “pork” projects coming to the state. Other presidents had steered such deals to their home states, leading Arkansans to expect the same.
When nothing close to the NASA Space Center that President Lyndon Johnson delivered to Houston materialized in the Natural State, conventional wisdom concluded that Clinton has not brought home the bacon. But Rutherford disagrees.
He cites the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport at Highfill as a $100 million project that would not have happened if Clinton had not been president. It was only the second new commercial airport built in the United States since Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport opened in 1974.
Rutherford also pointed out the more than $100 million in improvements that came to the Little Rock Air Force Base while Clinton was in office, although little fanfare was made.
Dr. I. Dodd Wilson, chancellor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, says Clinton saved UAMS from bankruptcy by working to get federal grant money for the school. “Without his intervention,” Wilson said at the topping out ceremony for the Jackson T. Stephens Spine and Neurosciences Institute, “UAMS would have lost the dollars that were absolutely critical to this institution.”
Rutherford also thinks making Little Rock Central High School a National Historic Site will bring benefits to the city and the state.
And while he was bringing a little of Washington to Arkansas, he was bringing a great deal of Arkansas to Washington.
“Hundreds of thousands of Arkansans got to see Washington and visit the White House while Clinton was president,” he said. “Arkansans filled hundreds of jobs in his administration, making connections and adding to recent developments in the state.”
The Library
Clinton’s impact on his home state will continue. He personally chose an industrial site in a rundown area of downtown Little Rock as home of the $160 million Clinton Presidential Center. The 27-acre park will eventually include the Clinton Presidential Library, the Clinton Presidential Archives, the Clinton Public Policy Institute and the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service.
Only the 12th presidential library in the country, it will have special heating and cooling systems to preserve the largest collection of presidential materials ever gathered — more than 77 million documents, 75,000 artifacts, 1.8 million photographs and 40 million e-mail messages. The material will be processed and, on Jan. 20, 2006, in compliance with the Presidential Records Act, will become open to the public.
Grand opening ceremonies for the library are scheduled for Nov. 14-18, 2004. The foundation that has raised the money for the library estimates that the facility will attract 300,000 visitors in its first year.
While redevelopment on the east end of Little Rock’s central business district was already under way, the coming of the Clinton Presidential Center has been the impetus for the restoration of much of the River Market and many downtown sections of Little Rock. Among the projects clustering around the site are Acxiom Corp.’s downtown tower, the Arkansas Capital Commerce Center, the First Security Center and Heifer International’s new headquarters. Many millions of dollars have been spent upgrading nearby hotels, including the $43 million conversion of the Excelsior into The Peabody Little Rock.
With Clinton’s popularity around the world and Heifer International nearby, Rutherford believes Little Rock can compete for international tourists. More than 5,000 delegates to the League of United Latin American Citizens are already booked at the Little Rock Convention Center in 2005. The National Council of Family Relations will bring 1,100 delegates to the city in 2008.
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