Arkansans have been entertained by Clinton's antics for more than twenty years.
His accomplishments have always been overshadowed by his scandals, partisanship, and narcisism.
Politicians who are straight shooters do not generate the kind of animosity and outright hatred that Clinton did. Pooh-pooh his scandals if you wish, but there is a lengthy list of them. Whitewater is one of the least important. The appearance of 700 personal FBI files at the White House by "accident" is just one of the more serious. An enemies list perhaps?
Heads would have rolled in most administrations over something like that. But heads never rolled in the Clinton administration.
Want more proof? Check the back editions of Arkansas' main daily newspaper The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. In the governor's race of 1990 then governor Clinton had his main opponent, Republican challenger Sheffield Nelson investigated by the State Attorney General's Office on a charge for which he had already been acquitted some years earlier. The original charge had to do with Nelson's alleged mismanagement of a public utilities review committee. The second investigation of this incident was initiated by Clinton and his administration just a few weeks before the election for governor. Clinton had been losing ground to Nelson in the polls shortly before the investigation was begun. An editor of the Democrat-Gazette , John Robert Starr, had been a supporter of Clinton until this incident. In a conversation with Clinton, held over the phone, Starr reported that he asked Clinton if he understood what the phrase "abuse of power" referred to? Clinton, he said, merely laughed.
I don't have to remind you of all the other scandals. They are well documented. If at times the criticism and the attacks on Clinton have seemed unfair then he brought much of it upon himself. During his first two years in office he was one of the most openly partisan presidents of the 20th century. This hurt not only himself but his party as well, which is one of the reasons the Democrats lost control of both houses of Congress in the elections of 1994. If you check history for a parallel to this you would find it in Woodrow Wilson's contemptuous attitude toward Republicans in Congress at the end of World War I, when he refused to take a single Republican on his trip to Europe to draw up the Versailles Treaty, an affront for which they never forgave him.
Clinton had many gifts, but humility and empathy with his political adversaries were not among them.
Regards, Shuckins
