In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [First Page] [334], (1) Lines: 0 to ——— 7.5pt PgV ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TE [334], (1) chapter fourteen Continuity and Change in Arkansas Politics Arkansas history can best be viewed as a tug of war between two polar opposites, modernizers on one side and traditionalists on the other. Michael B. Dougan, 1994 Show me a state that gives us William Fulbright, Wilbur Mills, Dale Bumpers and Tommy Robinson, and I’ll show you a state undergoing a severe identity crisis. Political satirist Mark Russell, 1986 SummarizingArkansas politics is, asAbraham Lincoln once said of running a democracy, about as easy as shoveling fleas. For every generalization, there are obvious exceptions. Every characterization must be qualified, and every label must be modified. The 1968 election in which Arkansas voters simultaneously selected George Wallace for president, J. W. Fulbright for senator, and Winthrop Rockefeller for governor is the most frequently cited anomaly, but there are countless others. How could a state that so routinely ratified Orval Faubus’s leadership through 1966, reject him in 1970 for Dale Bumpers, who bluntly told voters that segregation was morally wrong? Why would the same voters who enthusiastically embraced Ronald Reagan’s presidential candidacy in 1984 simultaneously reject all of the Arkansas candidates for whom he personally campaigned? Why during one recent decade did Arkansas voters repeatedly signal their desire for a new constitution but resoundingly reject the products of the constitutional conventions they had authorized? How could six in ten Arkansas voters cast their votes for a state constitutional amendment placing term limits on all Arkansas state officers and members Continuity and Change in Arkansas Politics 335 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [335], (2) Lines: 63 to 69 ——— 0.0pt PgVar ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [335], (2) of Congress on the same day in 1992 on which the same percentage of voters sent Dale Bumpers to Washington for his fourth six-year term? Arkansas political scientists are frequently asked for explanations of these and other enigmas. But the question that these political scientists have faced most often in the modern era is the “Why?” that followed this statement by an envious liberal colleague from North Carolina—a state with a presumably more progressive tradition—in the mid-1980s: “Y’all are supposed to be the backward ones, but you’ve got Clinton and Bumpers and Pryor, and we’ve got Jesse Helms.” In reality, this question (and similar observations made by more conservative colleagues, albeit with exasperation rather than envy) consists of two distinct, yet related, questions that this book grappled with in detail in the first edition. First, why has the small state of Arkansas consistently produced political leaders who have been nationally admired, to the point that they have been discussed as (and, in Clinton’s case, become) presidential possibilities? Second, if, as Michael Dougan has observed, “Arkansas history has been . . . a constant struggle between the forces of modernization and those of tradition,” why have the political forces of modernization so consistently beaten those of tradition since 1966? It is now vital to ask whether they remain legitimate questions in the early years of the twenty-first century and, if so, whether the political events of the past decade and a half provide any additional insights into the answers to them.1 The provisional answer this book’s previous edition provided to the first question suggested, correctly, that it would not be asked in the next political generation. In short, that exceptionally talented individuals had sought political office in Arkansas should not be surprising because there were few other attractive outlets—no great industrial enterprises or financial empires or intellectual undertakings—for those of unusual energy and intellect. It is no more mysterious that J. William Fulbright, returning from his Rhodes scholarship at Oxford, should have found politics more enticing than academia (or running the family’s lumberyard and bottling plant in Fayetteville) than that Bill Clinton should opt for the political arena thirty years later. It is not difficult to imagine why Dale Bumpers...

Share