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

of the National Governors Association. He was only forty years old. His mother was dealing with problems in her nursing practice, and his brother was readjusting to life after prison.

If that weren’t enough, my father had just suffered a stroke and my parents were moving to Little Rock so that Bill and I could help them out. I thought it was the wrong time in our lives and told him I just was not convinced.

One day he thought he would run, the next day, he was ready to say he would not. Finally, I persuaded him to set a date by which he would make a decision. Anyone who knows Bill understands he has to have a deadline or he will continue to explore every possible pro and con. He picked July 14 and reserved a room in a hotel to make his announcement―

whatever it might be. A number of his friends from around the country came down to be with him the day before. Some were pushing him to run; others thought it was premature and he should wait. Bill analyzed every point anyone raised. I thought it was significant that he was still debating less than twentyfour hours before he had to comment publicly. That meant to me that he was leaning against running but not quite ready to slam the door.

Much has been written about the reasons for his decision not to run, but it finally came down to one word: Chelsea. Carl Wagner, a longtime Democratic activist and father of an only daughter, told Bill he would effectively be turning his daughter into an orphan. Mickey Kantor delivered the same message while he and Bill sat on the back porch of the Governor’s Mansion. Chelsea came out and asked Bill about our upcoming vacation plans. When Bill said he might not have one if he ran for President, Chelsea looked at him and said, “Then Mom and I will go without you.” That sealed the decision for Bill.

Chelsea was beginning to understand what it meant to have a father in the public eye.

When she was little and Bill was Governor, she had no idea what he did. Once when she was about four and someone asked her, she replied, “My daddy talks on the telephone, drinks coffee and makes ‘peeches.”

The 1986 Governor’s campaign was the first one she had been old enough to follow.

She could read and watch the news and be exposed to some of the meanspiritedness that politics seems to generate. One of Bill’s opponents was Orval Faubus, the infamous former Governor who defied court orders to integrate Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957. President Eisenhower sent troops to enforce the law. Because of my concerns about what Faubus and his supporters would say and do, Bill and I tried to prepare Chelsea for what she might hear about her father or, for that matter, about her mother. We sat around our dinner table in the Governor’s Mansion role-playing with her, pretending we were in debates where one of us acted like a political opponent who criticized Bill for not being a good Governor. Chelsea’s eyes grew big at the idea that anyone would say such bad things about her daddy.

I loved Chelsea’s growing assertiveness, though it wasn’t always convenient. Around Christmas, 1988, I went duck hunting with Dr. Frank Kumpuris, a distinguished surgeon and good friend of mine, who invited me to join him, his two doctor sons, Drew and Dean, and a few other buddies at their hunting cabin. I hadn’t shot much since my days at Lake Winola with my dad, but I thought it would be fun. That’s how I found myself standing hip deep in freezing water, waiting for dawn in eastern Arkansas. When the sun rose, the ducks flew overhead and I made a lucky shot, hitting a banded duck. When I got home, Chelsea was waiting for me, outraged to wake up and learn that I had left home before dawn to go “kill some poor little duck’s mommy or daddy.” My efforts at explaining were futile. She didn’t speak to me for a whole day.

Although Bill decided not to run in 1988, the nominee, Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts, asked him to give the nominating speech at the Democratic Convention in Atlanta. It turned into a fiasco. Dukakis and his staff had reviewed and approved every word of Bill’s text ahead of time, but the speech was longer than the delegates or the television networks expected. Some delegates on the floor began yelling at Bill to finish.

This was a humiliating introduction to the nation, and many observers assumed Bill’s political future was over. Eight days later, though, he was on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Sbow, making fun of himself and playing his saxophone. Yet another comeback.

After Bill was reelected Governor in 1990, Democrats across the country approached him once again about running for President. That encouragement reflected the assessment that George H. W Bush was out of touch with most Americans. Although Bush’s popularity remained astronomical in the aftermath of the Gulf War, I thought his performance on domestic issues―particularly the economy―made him vulnerable. I had realized how unfamiliar President Bush was with many of the problems facing America when I spoke with him at an Education Summit he had convened of all the Governors in Charlottesville, Virginia, in September 1989. As the wife of the Democratic co-chair of the Summit for the National Governors Association, I was seated next to President Bush at a grand dinner held at Monticello. We enjoyed a cordial relationship and had been around each other many times at the White House or the annual Governors meetings. We talked about the American health care system. I said we had the best system in the world if you wanted a heart transplant but not if you wanted a baby to survive his or her first birthday.

Our rate of infant mortality at that time placed us behind eighteen other industrialized nations, including Japan,