Asa speculation still aloft

If there is nothing to this talk that Asa Hutchinson might be interested in, and under consideration for, the presidency of the University of the Arkansas System, then a couple of returned phone calls or texts offering clear denials would put it to rest.

And I haven’t heard a peep to that effect, despite my persistent offering of the opportunity.

If it’s not so, just tell me and I’ll write an apology to readers for airing irresponsible speculation.

If it’s so, I’ll write a column repeating that I don’t see the move as a good one for Hutchinson’s legacy, or as anything that he has any conventional background for, but that he certainly would bring a national political profile and state political gravitas to the job.

One of those message-returns could come from Hutchinson in which he’d say he has no interest in the job and doesn’t wish to be considered if perhaps some UA trustee or trustees is talking him up. But it hasn’t come.

The other could come from board member Ted Dickey to say it is not so that he is the prime advocate of such hiring and that he knows nothing of its discussion or possibility. But it hasn’t come.

I did hear from Dickey two days ago. He didn’t say no. But he did say something interesting.

Here is his text from out-of-state vacationing with his family: “You probably know more than I. Right now, we have a president in Don Bobbitt, and as long as he is the president, I’ll do all I can to support him. If I’m on the board when there is a vacancy, I’ll advocate for a comprehensive search and support the decision of my fellow board members. In the meantime, I cannot comment on speculation.”

First: I don’t know more on the subject than Dickey does. The difference is no more than that I know nothing, and he knows all.

Second: To support a comprehensive search after a natural vacancy occurs would be to resist any political power play among Asa’s eight appointees to the 10-member board to install him quickly. If there is to be a legitimate and credible search, not a formality and charade, then Asa would not be assured of the job.

Dickey’s statement would seem to call into question the report of a pre-emptive buyout of Bobbitt’s contract.

Among the many things I’ve been told by reliable sources is that an Asa-appointed board member has told the former governor he does not support him and favors a search when the time comes—and that such a search might take so long that it would test Hutchinson’s patience and send him in pursuit of other jobs.

I’ve also heard that Dickey touted the original idea to Hutchinson at a duck club; that Asa wants this job, and that Dickey has told balking Republican legislators that, if it’s a conservative UA president they want, Asa is about the most conservative they can hope to get out of a board with eight of his appointees.

Ican tell you that when I communicated weeks ago with Hutchinson and spoke of his coming home from the presidential campaign trial to write a memoir and play with the grandkids, he shot back that he was not interested in retiring and had work yet to do.

There are other active working options for him. He ought to be able to lock down clients for his law firm. He is very close to Walmart and the Waltons and they could find a cushy place for him, surely. And his resume extending to leading two federal agencies, serving in Congress and governing a state ought to make him a prospect for corporate boards.

It strikes me as a full life welllived to frolic with grandchildren, haul one’s 73-year-old body up and down the basketball hard court once a week, and write a memoir as a lifelong conservative Republican finding himself an outcast in the transformation to personality cult of his and Ronald Reagan’s beloved party.

But the pay isn’t great, should money be an issue. And if it’s the public arena that beckons him, writing would be a lonely existence.

At any rate, there is something here and it’s somewhere between not much and curiously persistent.

I have analyzed Hutchinson’s holding this job from the perspective of Hutchinson’s legacy, but I’ve not mentioned the perspective of the university. That’s because I think the UA is going to be the UA no matter the president, by which I mean a place of athletics controversy, turf and ego warring, institutional sparring and resentment and decent higher educations for those who work at them.