Gene Lyons
September 24, 2003
Beating Texas One More Time
Pardon my provincialism, but part of Gen.Wesley Clark's hometown
appeal is the opportunity his candidacy gives Arkansans to beat Texas
again. The David & Goliath aspect of the Razorbacks vs. Longhorns sports
rivalry provides a window into the Arkansas soul. I must have talked to
half a dozen people at Clark's Little Rock announcement of his
presidential hopes who compared it to the Hogs recent 38-28 victory in
Austin.
"We do this every 12 years," somebody joked. "It's an Arkansas
tradition." Indeed it was on a similarly perfect autumn day in October
1991 that my wife and I encountered Bill and Hillary Clinton at a
pre-game party outside War Memorial Stadium.Clinton was engaged in his
faintly risible statewide tour asking voters to let him drop his promise
to serve a full term as governor to seek the presidency.
It was one of the oddest days in recent Arkansas history. That
morning, we'd learned that the venerable Arkansas Gazette had folded,
replaced by the implacably Republican Democrat-Gazette. That afternoon,
the last Arkansas-Texas football game in the old Southwest Conference
was played. After the Razorbacks won, players, band members,
cheerleaders and fans lingered on the field, celebrating and lamenting
the end of an era.
At the pre-game party, Diane, a Pryor loyalist and no big Clinton
fan, had given the Big Dog a hug and told him to go for it. Raised and
educated in Arkansas, the prospect of a homegrown president meant a lot
to her. I remember asking Hillary if they'd lost their minds. Didn't she
realize, I asked, that their private lives would be laid open like a
fish on a cutting board? We had a brief, animated exchange that taught
me a lot about her fear and loathing of the press. I've often thought
about it since that day.
Seeing both Clintons as life-sized figures, I failed to comprehend
the magnitude of their ambition. Nobody who spends as much time alone
with books and animals as I do possibly could. Nor could anybody have
anticipated how gaining the White House would turn them into symbols:
media-magnified projections of the hopes and fears of millions. Nor how
far Washington political journalism--pushed by right-wing, Daddy
Warbucks cash, and pulled by the lure of the kind of sublunary fame
available to pundits in the cable TV era--would descend to the tabloid
ethics of the cult of celebrity. (I've an essay on this theme in the
October Harper's Magazine.)
Clark's campaign could well hinge upon how well he understands the
Washington press. So far, he's played shrewdly upon his media image as a
Democrat whose credentials in the post-9/11 era might have been dreamed
up by Central Casting: first in his West Point class, Rhodes Scholar,
decorated Vietnam Vet, four-star general, NATO Supreme Commander,
handsome, articulate, self-confident, straight as an arrow, etc. If
Clark wins the nomination, we won't be seeing any TV ads showing
President Junior prancing across the USS Abraham Lincoln in his tailored
flyboy costume.
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