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Bill Clinton’s Early Days
- Texas A&M University Press
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Bill Clinton’s Early Days david maraniss I’m in the odd position of being the biographer for the conference on the presidency of Bill Clinton, whose biography ended on October 3, 1991, the day he announced for the presidency. I don’t believe in fatalism. I certainly don’t believe that lives are preordained. I do believe, as Sidney said, that events are shaped by the contingencies of what you face. But I also believe deeply that history is instructive and that “what’s past is prologue” to a large degree. I’m fascinated as I look back on the Clinton presidency to see where Clinton’s past predicted his presidency, where it shaped his presidency, where it haunted his presidency, where it had no bearing on his presidency, and perhaps where it saved his presidency. When I started writing First in His Class, I was literally writing a chapter on Clinton’s first term as governor as Clinton was playing out his first two years as president. I remember one day talking to a colleague who had just interviewed Mark Gearan, who described the sort of organizational freewheeling, chaotic nature of those early Clinton presidential days as being akin to a group of six-year-olds on a soccer team all chasing after the ball. When I heard that, I was writing about the first organizational days of Clinton as governor, which were very much the same. Governor Clinton had come in with enormous ambition, a million ideas, and a certain administrative chaos. At the time staffers joked that a man came out of a mental institution near the Governor’s Mansion in Little Rock and announced to the secretary on the first floor that he was there to kill the governor. They immediately took him under control, and the state troopers were called up to the second floor. They said, “We’re holding a man down here—he says he’s here to kill the governor!” A note was sent to the chief of staff: “There’s a man downstairs who says he’s here to kill the governor.” The chief of staff sent him along to the appointment secretary and said, “See if you could fit this guy in.” Of course, the same staff deeply admired Bill Clinton and believed they were going to do great things for Arkansas. Yet Clinton staffers had that early frustration which was a part of Bill Clinton’s coming into anything with that sort of “let it all go.” The Clinton presidency reminded me of something else: his entire politi- bill clinton’s early days • 39 cal career is played out in two-year cycles. From 1974, when he first ran for Congress up in Fayetteville, all the way through being elected president, every two years he was tested. He was constantly seeking to be elected or reelected every two years. I came to think of his presidency not as two four-year terms but as four two-year terms. The years 1993 and 1994, much like his first term as governor, featured a lot of bold ideas and a few successes, but some things turned so wrong that he got defeated. He had been defeated as governor in 1980. He became the youngest ex-governor in American history. He fit the ironic description of a Rhodes Scholar, a bright young man with a great future behind him. Likewise, he was defeated as president in 1994 with the ascendancy of Newt Gingrich and the Republican revolution. But of course he figured out how to turn it around in Arkansas and was elected again in 1982. He certainly figured out how to come back against the Republicans in 1995 and was easily reelected in 1996. He had some very good successes in areas where he was essentially moving to the middle and co-opting the Republicans, whether it was on welfare reform or other issues, much as he did in Arkansas. Then in 1997 and 1998 he was trying to deal with his own troubles and with the right-wing attacks on him, and he finally had another recovery in 1999 and 2000. Four two-year presidencies. Every two years there’s a cycle for him. In the early days of the Clinton presidency, you could see his own history banging against what he wanted to do. He campaigned for president saying that he would get rid of the ban on gays in the military, but he also campaigned for president...