Candidates

It brought quite a few reader responses, that column of a couple weeks ago, the one built around the competing presidential candidacies of two Arkansas Republicans: Governor Asa Hutchinson, wondering if there could possibly be an opening in the GOP primary audience for something resembling an old school, Main Street centrist; and U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, convinced that Main Street is the road to nowhere, that a muscular, just-this-side-ofMAGA conservativism is the ticket.

“It would be great if Arkansas could produce a president,” wrote one reader, either in sarcasm or in honest if dismaying ignorance. A few others made mention of the 42nd president, and one recalled the failed White House campaigns of one of his gubernatorial successors. By and large, however, the responses seemed to have been submitted by newcomers to Arkansas. Or by natives younger than, say, 30. Or who have, or had, no interest in policy or our political history. So here’s a scattershot review, you are welcome, of Arkansans and their aspirations to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

As noted, William Jefferson Clinton was the only one of our state to make it all the way, having spent his first four decades aiming for it. His planning, aided by the times, paid off: He became the first candidate to unseat an incumbent president (George H.W. Bush, in 1992) since Franklin Roosevelt defeated Herbert Hoover (in 1932), and the first Democrat, after FDR, to win two full presidential terms.

Was Hillary Rodham Clinton “one of us”? (And what does that mean?) Well, she resided here, and did admirable service to education in Arkansas, for two decades. Having moved on to New York and one of its Senate seats, and later to the State Department, she lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama in 2008 and then, having won her party’s bid eight years later, lost the race to Donald Trump.

The Hutchinson-Cotton rivalry of today has a rough, very rough parallel in that ’08 race, in the sense that two Arkansans were in the running: Hillary on one side, and Governor Mike Huckabee in the Republican field. Fresh off a decade in the Arkansas statehouse, Huckabee flew from the gate, winning the Iowa caucus with enormous help from fellow religious conservatives. He had respectable showings in other states before being outpaced by Arizona’s John McCain. Huckabee tried again eight years later. No sale.

Moving on now — actually, we’re moving backward — we’re in 2004, and another Arkansan is seeking the Democratic nomination. The resume is terrific: as was President Clinton, Wes Clark was a Rhodes scholar; unlike Clinton, he had a 34-year military record, including a Purple Heart from combat in Vietnam, and his service ended with four stars on each epaulet. Clark won the Oklahoma primary but his success ended there.

By 1984 Dale Bumpers, then in his second term in the U.S. Senate, was one of the most popular politicians in Arkansas. Finally acknowledging what everyone had long known — that he would, sure, like to be president — Bumpers surveyed the landscape before deciding, correctly, that it belonged to Ronald Reagan. Four years later Bumpers sniffed the air again, and again backed away. Clinton was sampling the atmosphere as well, though, like Bumpers, he opted against the race.

Just how serious was the campaign by U.S. Representative Wilbur Mills in 1972? Serious enough that the Second District congressman, the veteran “Mr. Chairman” of the House Ways and Means Committee and one of Washington’s most powerful men, spent months and millions of dollars before formally ending the effort at the Miami nominating convention. Mills’ attempt was, regardless, a curiosity: He was hardly a telegenic candidate and his record on civil rights legislation negated the appeal that his work on Medicare and Social Security legislation had for older Americans. Despite his national (in fact, global) influence, Mills was essentially a favorite son candidate; and many wondered, in retrospect, if his pursuit of the presidency was a delusion fueled by a drinking problem that would soon enough become public.

Favorite sons: there is never a shortage of them in Arkansas or in other states. They are a pleasant enough diversion provided the charade doesn’t go on too long, delaying the inevitable or denying the presumptive nominee a quick kill at the convention. Arkansas Republicans put forth Winthrop Rockefeller’s name in 1968, naturally, and brother Nelson didn’t object since Richard Nixon was on his mind. With the chaos of Central High still vivid and the civil rights movement gaining momentum, Arkansas Democrats nonetheless put Governor Orval Faubus’s name in nomination before climbing aboard the Kennedy juggernaut.

So an Arkansan contemplating a White House run, or actually entering the contest, isn’t new. Winning the race is — almost — unprecedented.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Steve Barnes is a columnist with Editorial Associates in Little Rock.)