Word: brummett
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...beyond Arkansas now. He's more Yale and Oxford than Arkansas." That was the snap judgment, later modified, of columnist John Brummett, the best of the journalistic Clinton watchers in Little Rock. When several people told me that Bill Clinton brought them into the state and took them on tours of its beauties, Brummett said, "I wonder what they could be. Maybe he should take me on one of those tours." When Hillary Rodham first came to Arkansas, it took Clinton nine hours to drive the one-hour's distance from Little Rock's airport to his mother's home...
...close second. Diane Blair, a political scientist who has written the best study of the state's constitutional structure, calls Arkansas nearly ungovernable. Yet Clinton has governed it -- fairly well -- for 12 years. He seems to find in it things that elude the rest of us. As Brummett talked, he moved from his first judgment. "Clinton in Arkansas is like Bush in the nation -- he has hometowns everywhere and a network of friends in each place." Clinton can best be understood in terms of his four hometowns: Hope, Hot Springs, Fayetteville and Little Rock...
...than Clinton at this kind of shoulder-patting, chat-about- the-family, how-is-so-and-so-back-in-such-and-such-a-town politics. In his second and subsequent terms as Governor, he sought out legislators in the halls of the capitol, acting as his own best lobbyist. Brummett wrote that it would be more dignified for the Governor to summon people to his office; but the informality of Clinton's new approach seemed to work. He realized that his long-range plans depended on building popular support, and he sent his wife out to talk about concern...
Though he has taken on the gun lobby by supporting legislation to restrict firearms and annoyed abortion activists by backing parental notification, Clinton has a reputation in Arkansas for trying to please everyone. John Brummett, a columnist in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, says Clinton's "desire to be loved is unhealthy, even for a politician." Back in office in 1983, Clinton rewarded his opponents on the right by approving home schooling and signing more than 100 corporate tax breaks...