Voices from the Southern Oral History Program
What Sells Me
Bill Clinton, 1974
INTERVIEWED BY JACK BASS AND WALTER DE VRIES
COMPILED AND INTRODUCED BY SETH KOTCH
In June of 1974, just four days after winning a runoff election in the Democratic primary, the newly minted candidate for Congress in Arkansass 3rd District, Bill Clinton, sat down with Jack Bass and Walter De Vries to discuss the campaign. Four years later Clinton would be Arkansass governor-elect and shaking hands with Jimmy Carter in the White House. Courtesy of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
In June of 1974, just four days after winning a runoff election in the Democratic primary, the newly minted candidate for Congress in Arkansass 3rd District, Bill Clinton, sat down with Jack Bass and Walter De Vries to discuss the campaign. In this interview, Clinton shows off the zeal for detail that he would eventually carry with him to the White House, dissecting the 3rd District and its voters, analyzing his opponents strategies, and planning for a careful campaign against Republican John Paul Hammerschmidt (a battle Clinton would lose 52 percent to 48 percent). Clinton also speaks about balancing charisma and substance. My campaign... is issue-oriented, he says, which is what sells me as a human being.
BILL CLINTON ON VOTER PERCEPTION OF HIM AS UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR, YALE GRADUATE, RHODES SCHOLAR, AND CAMPAIGN WORKER FOR GEORGE MCGOVERN
One of my opponents started running against me early in the primary, and he had these ads which appeared once as a quarter-page ad and a couple weeks later as a third-of-a-page ad. It said Candidate Profile, and it had on it Bill Clinton on Gene Rainwater [a crew-cut conservative Democrat Clinton defeated in the 1974 Democratic primary for Arkansass 3rd District]. And it had his age and mine. His political experiences, his legislative offices. None by my name. Present legislative duties and his committees. None by mine. It had his military record. None by mine. And it had his political and civic affairs and job experience, and he had deleted what he wanted to [from mine]. Hed taken it from my biographical sheet. Said that Id served eight months as a law professor and had worked for five months at a time in two different periods at another college. And implied that those were the only jobs Ive ever had. Then, at the end, it had political and civic and religious affiliations, and hed left off all these Arkansas campaigns Id worked on and people Id been involved with. It said Texas, the chairman of McGovern campaign, or coordinator. He ran it in the newspaper, and people read it.
I got a call from a seventy-year-old man the next day, whos the secretary of the county committee down at Van Buren, which is in the fifth biggest county in my district, Crawford County, just above Fort Smith. He said, Hell, son, I think we might take him out of there without a runoff since he started running that ad. If I were you, Id call a press conference and tell them youre sorry he couldnt be the youngest law professor in the history of the university. I mean, its funny, you know.
People tell me its a peculiar district in a funny year. And I had any number of people tell me that they thought that was a political ad for me, because theyre sick of experience. Its a peculiar thing, and its a mystery to me. Now the McGovern thing has hurt me some. Dont misunderstand me. I was down in Clark County on the way back to Little Rock, and its an enormous county geographically. Roscoes the main city, but north theres just no telling how many square miles of just rural area. I went up to one of these communities to church at the end of the primary. I carried the city of Roscoe and got my brains beat out in the county. Just got obliterated in the countyand I went to this country store to see a guy who was in large part responsible for it. Just standing there talking to him, thats what he wanted to know about. He was rabid about this McGovern thing, the idea that I had been for McGovern, you see. So I took about ten minutes and told him all about it. And I told the truth.
Bill Clinton: Most of those senators Ive been very disillusioned with, watching their responses to the Vietnam War, whether they were for it or against it. I think they were by and large playing it to their own advantage. Scared just to do one thing or the other. I thought McGovern had been one of the few decent people, one of the least egotistical men Id met. George McGovern, 1972, photographed by Warren K. Leffler, courtesy of the collections of the Library of Congress.
Id worked in the Senate in 66 and seen all those guys. Most of those senators Ive been very disillusioned with, watching their responses to the Vietnam War, whether they were for it or against it. I think they were by and large playing it to their own advantage. Scared just to do one thing or the other. I thought McGovern had been one of the few decent people, one of the least egotistical men Id met. All of which I thought was true. And he said, Okay.
You cant be defensive about it. You dont apologize for it. He said, OkayI carried 80 percent of the guys boxes in the runoff. Just beat anything I ever saw.
ON CHOOSING TO RUN
In the first place, I was very much disillusioned with the record of [John Paul Hammerschmidt, Republican incumbent in Arkansass 3rd District and a conservative ally of Nixon]. I think hes got a bad record, and its bad for the people in this area. And I thought somebody ought to run. All of my friends in the state legislature and active in Democratic politics thought somebody ought to be running. But nobody was interested in it, because they said either it couldnt be done or they were not in a personal position to be able to do it. Financial reasons or whatever reasons. And it just ate on me and ate on me.
On Orval Faubus, at the time the former governor of Arkansas, who notoriously had used the National Guard to prevent the integration of Little Rock High School: Faubus has a fine mind and a lot of influence in these hills and knows things that are worth knowing. I sat down with him, and we talked for eight and a half hours. I held my ground, and, needless to say, he held his. Orval Faubus at the Little Rock Nine protest at the state capitol, Little Rock, 1959, courtesy of the New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection at the Library of Congress.
I started thinking about it pretty strongly in December, and in January I received a call from John Dorr [chief counsel for House Judiciary Committees inquiry into Nixons impeachment and former Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights from 1960 to 1967]. He asked me at that time to take a leave of absence and come be special assistant on the Judiciary Committee and help him put his staff together. Hes a friend and a fine man, and, I mean, I had to seriously consider. This provoked me, and I called everybody that I would like to help get elected to Congress. I just asked them outright, would they run? And they all said no. I did think that John could find other lawyers that could do anything that I could do, and I might be able to make some sort of a contribution by staying here and making this race, if I could raise any money to do it.
