When Bill Clinton, the charming former Baby Governor of Arkansas, with the footloose walk and slightly lollygagging manner was elected President, the prophetic song, "The South Will Rise Again," had almost come true. The pro-slavery states were in power.
In Clinton's second term, Newt Gingrich, elected to the House of Representatives from Georgia, became House Speaker. Trent Lott from Mississippi was Senate Majority leader. Al Gore from Tennessee was Vice President and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was William Rehnquist, a Northerner but a States' Rights advocate. The South had risen except that Bill Clinton, as light-skinned and blue-eyed as he could be, was out telling people that he was black.
The person the press dubbed as "First Friend," Vernon Jordan, is black. There was even some evidence that Clinton had several black girl friends in the past and a black child shipped out of the country to a private school.
Friends from Arkansas say for decades he had been hanging out with shoulder-rubbing black preachers. The shoulder rub had been mastered by black preachers to win over female congregants. Add to the shoulder rub Clinton's blue eyes, about which Roger Simon recently rhapsodized: "His eyes are deep and blue and comforting and, as person after person will tell you, when his eyes lock onto yours, you feel like you are the only other person in the world."
Why he was a regular scalawag some true-blue Southerners said. In England a scalawag is a rascal or a hooligan. Wikipedia defines the American usage as "scalawags --a derogatory nickname for southern whites who supported (Black) Reconstruction following the Civil War." As happened during Reconstruction, while Clinton was President a lot of black folk were appointed to important jobs
Wikipedia continues: "During the 1868-69 session of Judge "Greasy" Sam Watts court in Haywood County, North Carolina, Dr. William Closs, D.D. testified that a scalawag was "a Native born Southern white man who says he is no better than a negro and tells the truth when he says it." Wow! Bill?
But more to the point of this series of posts Clinton favored the American Dream of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, not the American Dream of empire of Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. No wonder black folk, the social barometers of justice, equality, and freedom loved him.
Clinton was the only hold out in "The South Will Rise Again" scenario. He claimed that "they" never forgave him for that. He embraced the American Dream of a "common humanity," the "We are the World" dream instead of the "We own the world" dream. Clinton identified with something that black folk liked about themselves.
He did not equate blackness with crime, welfare, food stamps, and statistics on social decay, as many Americans did, and still do. (Listen to the 2012 Republican Presidential candidates. Their only references to African Americans are negative ones -food stamps, crimes, welfare. Those are the only frames of references they have.)
But even during impeachment, while the Congress and Special Prosecutors were beating on Clinton like he was an n-word. He maintained that the poor black folk he knew in Arkansas were mostly decent, law abiding citizens. This was an amazing truth for an American political figure to say outright and repeat often.
Right there in his official biography on the White House web site was the declaration that his family owned "a small grocery store just outside of Hope, and despite the segregation laws of the time, they allowed people of all races to purchase goods on credit."
In foreign policy Clinton was tough-minded in defense of the nation, but he didn't seem to buy into the American Dream of empire. Seems that he dreamed of the brotherhood (and definitely the sisterhood) of man (humanity). (see "Obama's Dilemma: Can we make peace with two competing American Dreams?" Tag line: Bill Clinton could be a black president. Barack Obama wouldn't dare.)
"What really matters is our common humanity," Clinton told a crowd at a salute given for him by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "When we forget it, we suffer. When we remember it, we prosper." As we all know, under Clinton the entire country prospered, governed by an Administration that had more minorities and women than any before in history.
Previous posts in this series are:
Obama's Dilemma
When Michael Jackson Met Ronald Reagan
Foot Soldiers of the Reagan Revolution
The Coming of the Reaganites
Undoing the 1960s
Will the 60s Revolution Be Undone?
Should President Obama Have Gone the Way of LBJ?
New posts in this series are coming soon.
George Davis is creator of the series of world-sourced, interactive books, Barack Obama, America and the World. This series contains the background reporting, drawn from sources across the nation and around the world, that give deeper meaning to the ideas in this post.
