From: RBW%PITTVMS.bitnet@UMCVMB.missouri.edu
Subject: Re: G.Schiavone's "Politics in Clinton's AR"
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: University of Missouri
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@UMCVMB.missouri.edu>
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 23:55:59 GMT

     Guy Schiavone wrote recently over the Activ-L ("Politics in
Bill Clinton's Arkansas") that "Bill Clinton will remain a 'scandal-
a-week' candidate well into the next Fall if he is nominated. His
record will cast serious and universal doubt upon his honesty, and
he will be destroyed as a viable presidential candidate."  Guy relies
heavily on (and quotes extensively from) Diane Blair's book, *Arkansas
Politics and Government* for evidence of Clinton's "scandalous"
and "Bush-league politics in Arkansas."  He concludes: "I suggest
to anyone with further interest to order Diane D. Blair's book. The
book is extensively referenced and would serve as an excellent resource
for further research."  He then welcomed "comments, criticisms, corrections,
or updates, especially from Arkansas residents."  What follows is a
response from Diane Blair, a University of Arkansas political science
professor (on leave, working full-time for the Clinton campaign):

   "While I am delighted that my book (Arkansas Politics and Government:
   Do the People Rule?) is serving as a reference for those wishing to
   know more about the political milieu in which Bill Clinton has operated,
   I am both amused and appalled to think it could be used to give
   credibility to those envisioning an endless drip of electability-
   damaging scandal.  I have read the excerpts and commentary on
   Bitnet and hope you'll accept a few brief reactions.

   First, while the chapter on Interest Groups quoted from at length
   is critical of the excessive role played by pressure groups in
   Arkansas politics, any honest evaluation would make the same
   indictment of any state's political system. What the excerpts
   exclude is notation of the fact that Clinton's frustration over
   the excessive power of lobbyists led him to reform the system--
   a process that was beginning when the book was written, and led
   (after many bloody battles) to an initiated act which limits and
   exposes the operations of lobbyists.

   Similarly, in virtully every one of the fifty states, governors
   have their own supply of devices with which to persuade legislators
   to support gubernatorial initiatives. In all states, programs and
   personnel are part of the gubernatorial arsenal; there is nothing
   scandalous, only somewhat idiosyncratic, about the racing passes
   which Arkansas governors and legislators alike make available to
   those constituents first requesting them. (This is hardly an "insider"
   deal; on any given day over half the people at Oaklawn enter on a pass
   rather than paying the $2.00 general admission fee). Arkansas people
   have heretofore preferred that their governors hitchhike on private
   planes rather than saddle the taxpayers with the cost of purchasing one,
   so long as they fully disclose these trips, which Clinton has scrupulously
   done.

   The reading of my book seems curiously selective.  No mention is made
   of the chapter which uses education as a testing ground for public
   policy change, and concludes that there have been truly remarkable
   reforms and improvements under Clinton's leadership.  I thought of
   that today when reading the NY Times and seeing that Governor Brown
   had frozen faculty salaries in California, arguing that faculty members
   are compensated with "psychic income."  In contrast, the November 1991
   Chronicle of Higher Education ranked Arkansas 5th of the 50 states in
   percentage increase in funding for higher education for both the last
   2 years and the last 10 years-- not an easy feat in a low-income state
   where only 10% of all adults have a college degree.

   Bill Clinton has run in 17 different elections since 1974, in a small
   state with a highly suspicious citizenry.  For most of this period the
   two state newspapers were engaged in a death battle and felt that the
   major path to readership lay in exposing every possible flaw in Clinton's
   persona and performance.  Most of the "stories" emerging in the national
   press have been thoroughly vetted in Arkansas previously and dismissed
   as tempests in media teapots.

   Clinton knows precisely how to build the coalition and the platform which
   can defeat Bush in the fall; and he knows how to conduct the kind of
   campaign which will take it to the Republicans in a way it hasn't been done
   since the give-em-Hell days of Truman.  This is the major reason I have
   taken leave this semester to work full-time on the Clinton campaign.
   That my book should be cited as reason *not* to support this eminently
   electable and demonstrably progressive man is truly ironic."

(Forwarded by Ray Wrabley)

Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive