Living History Unknown (best books to read fiction .txt) 📖

lawsuit was tried before a judge who had been accused of misconduct on the bench, mostly due to his excessive acquaintance with alcohol.

Under Arkansas law, judicial investigations were conducted by the Attorney General, namely my husband. The judge, who knew me only as “Ms. Rodham,” paid close attention to me, often making comments like, “How pretty you look today,” or, “Come up here so I can get a good look at you.”

At the end of the plaintiff’s case, Phil moved for a directed verdict in favor of our client, since there was no evidence connecting our client to the alleged negligence that had caused the accident. The judge agreed and granted the motion. Phil and I packed up and went back to Little Rock. A few days later, an attorney for one of the other defendants called to tell me what had happened while the jury was out. The judge had started ranting to the lawyers about Bill Clinton’s investigation and how mistreated he felt. Finally, one of them interrupted him and asked, “Judge, you know that lady lawyer, Hillary Rodham, who was here with Phil Carroll? That’s Bill Clinton’s wife.”

“Well, goddammit, if I’d known that,” the judge exclaimed, “they’d never have gotten that directed verdict!”

The winter after Bill’s defeat, a few of our friends and supporters came to talk to me about using “Clinton” as my last name. Ann Henry told me some people were upset when they received invitations to events at the Governor’s Mansion from “Governor Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham.” Chelsea’s birth announcement, also featuring our two names, was apparently a hot subject of conversation around the state. People in Arkansas reacted to me much as my motherin-law had when she first met me: I was an oddity because of my dress, my Northern ways and the use of my maiden name.

Jim Blair joked about staging an elaborate scenario on the steps of the Capitol. Bill would put his foot on my throat, yank me by my hair and say something like, “Woman, you’re going to take my last name and that’s that!” Flags would wave, hymns would be sung and the name would change.

Vernon Jordan came to town to give a speech and asked me if I would make him breakfast, including grits, at our house the next morning. In our little kitchen, perched on a too small chair, he ate my instant grits and urged me to do the right thing: start using Bill’s last name. The only person who didn’t ask me or even talk to me about my name was my husband. He said my name was my business, and he didn’t think his political future depended on it one way or another.

I decided it was more important for Bill to be Governor again than for me to keep my maiden name. So when Bill announced his run for another term on Chelsea’s second birthday, I began calling myself Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The 1982 campaign was a family endeavor. We loaded Chelsea, diaper bag and all, into a big car driven by a true friend, Jimmy Red Jones, and we drove around the state.

We started in the South, where spring had snuck in under the pine trees, and ended in Fayetteville in a snowstorm. I’ve always liked campaigning and traveling through Arkansas, stopping at country stores, sale barns and barbecue joints. It’s a continuing education in human nature, including your own. I had been surprised when I had gone door-to-door for Bill in his 1978 campaign and encountered women who told me their husbands did the voting for them or met African Americans who thought there was still a poll tax to be paid.

In 1982, with Chelsea on my hip or holding my hand, I walked up and down streets meeting voters. I remember meeting some young mothers in the small town of Bald Knob. When I said I bet they were having a good time talking to their babies, one of them asked, “Why would I talk to her? She can’t talk back.” I knew from my Yale Child Study days―and from my mother―how important it was to talk and read to babies to build their vocabularies. Yet when I tried to explain this, the women were polite but dubious.

After Bill’s election in 1982, a humbler, more seasoned Governor returned to the State House, though no less determined to get as much done as possible in two years.

And there was so much to be done. Arkansas was a poor state, last or close to last by many measures, from percentage of college graduates to per capita personal income. I had helped Bill tackle health care reform in his first term, successfully setting up a network of health clinics, recruiting more doctors, nurses and midwives into rural areas―

over the opposition of the state’s medical society. When Governor White tried to make good on his 198o campaign promise to dismantle the network, people flooded into the Capitol to protest, and White had to retreat. Bill and I agreed that Arkansas would never prosper without an overhaul of its education system. Bill announced that he was forming an Education Standards Committee to recommend sweeping educational reforms, and he wanted me to be its Chair.

I had chaired the Rural Health Committee, and Bill asked me to tackle education because he wanted to send a signal about how serious he was. Nobody, including me, thought it was a good idea. But Bill wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Look on the bright side,” he said. “If you’re successful, our friends will complain that you could have done even more. And our enemies will complain that you did too much. If you accomplish nothing, our friends will say, ‘She should never have tried this.’ And our enemies will say, ‘See, she couldn’t get anything done!’ “ Bill was convinced he was right to appoint me, and eventually I relented.

Again, this was a politically risky move. Improving the schools would require an increase in taxes-never a popular idea. The