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About fifteen minutes later, I was told the White...
Posted on 2010-Mar-10 at 04:02
About fifteen minutes later, I was told the White House was trying to reach me on the phoneApparently the President wanted to thank me for helping line up the governors supportAppearances can be deceivingWhat the President wanted to tell me was that the weather was about to turn cold in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where the rest of the Cubans were being housedBecause those forts werent insulated from the winter weather, he said it would be necessary to move the refugeesNow that the security problems were solved at Fort Chaffee, they would be moved therePresident, you promised that no more refugees would be sent to ArkansasSend them to a fort in some warm place out west youre not going to win in November anywayThe President replied that hed considered that but couldnt do it because it would cost $10 million to outfit a facility out westPresident, your word to the people of Arkansas is worth $10 millionHe disagreed, and we ended the conversation
Now that Ive been President, I have some idea of the pressures Jimmy Carter was underHe was dealing with both rampant inflation and a stagnant economyThe American fake tiffany heart drop earrings hostages in Iran had been held by the Ayatollah Khomeini for almost a yearThe Cubans werent rioting anymore, so they were the least of his problemsPennsylvania and Wisconsin had both voted for him in 1976, and they had more electoral votes than Arkansas, which he had won with almost two-thirds of the voteI was still more than twenty points ahead of my opponent, Frank White, in the polls, so how could I be hurt?
At the time I saw it differentlyI knew the President would be hurt badly by breaking his commitment to ArkansasWhether or not the forts in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania had to be closed for weather or for political reasons, sending the remaining Cubans to the one place he had promised not to, in order to save $10 million, was nutsI called Rudy Moore and my campaign chairman, Dick Herget, to see what they thought I should doDick said I should fly directly to Washington to see the PresidentIf I couldnt change his mind, I should talk to the press outside the White House and withdraw my support for his reelectionBut I couldnt do that, for two reasonsFirst, I didnt want to look like a modern version of Orval cheapest replica speedy louis vuitton real leather Faubus and other southern governors who resisted federal authority in the civil rights yearsSecond, I didnt want to do anything to help Ronald Reagan beat CarterReagan was running a great campaign, with a big head of steam, fueled by the hostages, the bad economy, and the intense support of right-wing groups outraged about everything from abortion to Carters turning the Panama Canal over to Panama
Gene Eidenberg asked me not to announce the relocation until he could come to Arkansas and put the best face on itThe story leaked anyway, and Genes visit to Arkansas did little to helpHe made a convincing case that there would be no further security problems, but he couldnt deny that the President was breaking a clear commitment to the state that had been more supportive of him than any other outside his native GeorgiaI won a larger role in controlling the security arrangements and made some improvements, but I was still the Presidents man in Arkansas who had failed to hold him to his word
I returned home from Denver to a very volatile political situationMy opponent in the general election, Frank White, was gaining buying chanel bags groundWhite was a big man with a booming voice and a bombastic style that belied his background as a graduate of the Naval Academy, savings-and-loan executive, and former director of the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission under Governor PryorHe had strong support from all the interest groups Id taken on, including utility, poultry, trucking, and timber companies, and the medical associationsHe was a born-again Christian with the strong backing of the state chapter of the Moral Majority and other conservative activistsAnd he had the pulse of the country people and blue-collar workers upset about the car tagsHe also had the advantage of a generally disgruntled mood, due to the economy and the droughtWhen the bad economy led state revenues to decline below projections, I was forced to lower state spending to balance the budget, including education cuts that reduced the second years $1,200 pay raise for teachers to about $900Many teachers didnt care about the states budget problems; they had been promised $1,200 for two years and they wanted the second installmentWhen it didnt come, the intensity of their fendi handbag replicas support for me faded considerably
Back in April, Hillary and I had seen Frank White at an event and I told her that no matter what the polls said, he was starting with 45 percent of the voteI had made that many people madAfter the announcement that all the refugees would be housed at Fort Chaffee, White had his mantra for the election: Cubans and Car TagsThats all he talked about for the rest of the campaignI campaigned hard in August but without much successAt factory gates, workers changing shifts said they wouldnt vote for me because I had made their economic woes worse and betrayed them by raising the car tagsOnce while campaigning in Fort Smith, near the bridge to Oklahoma, when I asked a man for his support, he gave a more graphic version of the answer Id heard hundreds of times: You raised my car tagsI wouldnt vote for you if you were the only SOB on the ballot! He was angry and red in the faceIn exasperation, I pointed over the bridge to Oklahoma and said, Look over thereIf you lived in Oklahoma your car tags would be more than twice as expensive as they are now! Suddenly all the red drained out of his rolex sport watch fac
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