My own campaign strategies were first tested in my campaign for president of the Student Council, an office in which I distinguished myself by alternately brown-nosing and outraging the faculty. I was more successful in building a network of student body presidents from smaller schools to defeat the odds-on favorite from the largest school in the region for head of the district student council association, another meaningless position that I massaged and maintained as a base for my later elections to the Student Senate at the University of Arkansas. This was all very easy and a somewhat amusing diversion, but the prize was never as valuable as the chase was fun. I did, however, enjoy the personal relationships and the campaigns, which were respectably-implemented versions of Madison County ward politics. I was also coming to understand that “issues” had nothing to do with these election victories, and I was beginning to think that they might be equally irrelevant in politics generally.

Politics have always been weird in Arkansas, V. O. Key's simplistic assessment notwithstanding. In 1968, the state reelected anti-war Democrat J. William Fulbright to the Senate, reelected Republican Winthrop Rockefeller as Governor, and gave a plurality to third party candidate George Wallace for President. By early 1970--my junior year in college--the Doppler effect of geography was bringing the national issues of the 1960s to Arkansas. I had been shaken by the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, disgusted by Lyndon Johnson’s foreign policy, appalled by the election of Richard Nixon, and awakened by the Costa-Gavras film Z; but, I was still more frat rat than flower child. When two of my high school friends were killed in Vietnam, however, the reality and the senselessness of that war came home with them. Then four students were murdered by the Ohio militia at Kent State. I was beginning to think that politics might have real consequences.

I had only a few close friends who shared my growing concerns, but I could always count on challenging conversations with my dad. I was more than a little intrigued in February 1970 when he suggested that I should forget campus politics and run for the state legislature, something I had never even remotely considered. I mean, geezus, I was only 20 years old! While I had some practical political experience and a small degree of political acumen, I had found my political science courses uniformly boring. If I had a political philosophy, it was merely inductive and certainly unarticulated.

Within a month I had convinced myself that I wanted to be a candidate. The House District was composed of Madison and Carroll Counties, and the two-term incumbent State Representative, Danny Patrick, was a Madison County Republican who had carried both counties in the last election against an “old pol” former Representative from Carroll County. He had announced for reelection, and his campaign would be bankrolled lavishly by the incumbent Republican governor, Winthrop Rockefeller. Understandably, no experienced Democrat had announced against him.

I recruited my best friend, Skip Rutherford, to be my campaign manager. At the time he was editor of the student newspaper at the University; he would later become Administrative Assistant to United States Senator David Pryor, Chair of the Arkansas Democratic Party, and the young sage of Arkansas politics. With several other friends and co-conspirators -- Curt Bradbury, Clif Chitwood, Henry Woods, and Carolyn Bassett -- we started reading the Arkansas Gazette more closely for state political issues, talked with people across the state for ideas, developed a rather lengthy and innocuous platform for a legislative campaign, and thought ourselves quite sophisticated. This scheme was fine, but we had obviously been affected by high school civics teachers and misled by college textbooks.

I knew what really had to be done.

One day in early March I practiced my pitch, cut my classes, put on a tie, drove to Huntsville, and walked into the Madison County Courthouse. I was there to “see” Charles Whorton, the Boss of the county Democratic political machine. Whorton had been County Clerk since 1954, controlling voter registration and elections, and had been the real power behind what was known as the Faubus Machine, delivering a vote equalling 104% of the paid poll taxes in the 1964 election. He was both feared and respected by the political opposition; on the hustings and in the courts they repeatedly charged that he voted dead people, plyed voters with whiskey, stuffed ballot boxes, stole elections, corrupted the political process, and thwarted the will of the people. They knew that he was one of the foremost power brokers in the state and the dominant political force in the county. I knew that I must have his blessing to run for office.

When I arrived at the courthouse and entered the County Clerk’s office, I saw Whorton sitting in the adjoining office of the County Judge (a position he would formally hold from 1972 to 1988). He motioned for me to come in and have a seat; he already knew why I was there. With him in the office were Clarence Watson (County Judge and a distant relative), Noah Leatham (retired County Sheriff and Chair of the County Democratic Central Committee), Omer Fowler (County Assessor), and Andrew Nelson (a Justice of the Peace who had been County Assessor in the 1930s). There I was, a bright-eyed, 20 year old, college kid with a reform platform promising open and responsive government for the people, facing an interview committee of tired hacks and courthouse pols, some born in the last century and only one with even a high school degree. I had the necktie market cornered in that room.

Something, I thought, was wrong with this picture. Maybe I was making a mistake? I did not recall a description of this scene in any of my political science classes. I experienced the sense of “otherness” long before I would even hear the term.

I sat down and nervously said, “I’d like to run for State Representative.”

Nothing. Complete silence. A few glances were exchanged among the committee members. Whorton puffed on his pipe as he looked at the ceiling, back at me, at a parts store pin-up calendar, and out the window. Two minutes took what seemed like fifteen to pass. Maybe they didn’t hear me. Yeah, right.

Just as I was deciding whether to bolt from the room or say something inane, Whorton looked at me and said, “OK, we’ll be for you.”

That’s it? Maybe they didn’t think anyone had a chance to defeat the guy. Totally unaware of what had just happened and with absolutely no clue about the decision process, I blurted out, “But . . . but . . . don’t you want to hear about my platform?” Everyone in the room, except me, burst into loud--and I thought rude--laughter. Obviously, I didn’t get it.

Whorton smiled and asked, “If something comes up in the legislature that’s good for this county, you’re gonna be for it, aren’t you?”

“Well, yeah,” I said.

“Well, then,” he said, “you can make a speech on any damn thing you want to. We don’t give a shit about your platform.”

I had just become the machine candidate for the state legislature. That meant the Democratic nomination for the House would be mine without opposition. They gathered around the desk and began filling a legal pad with names of people I should visit as soon as possible. Whorton placed a call to Carroll County Judge Arthur Carter to tell him that I was the candidate, ask him to spread the word in his county, and set an appointment for me to meet with him. Andrew Nelson, a political contemporary of my grandfather, was to be my sponsor and travel companion on the initial visit to members of the Democratic Central Committee and other rural township functionaries.

It was a done deal.

They thought I was one of them, perhaps because I had worked in local political campaigns for years or because of my family’s political history, but I knew I was nothing like them. I was wrong.

The next week I announced my candidacy in the four weekly newspapers in the district. I spent long hours in the car with Andrew Nelson during the next two months as we covered the backroads of the district, which covered 1,700 square miles, running 60 miles from the Missouri border south to the heart of the Ozark National Forest. We talked with several hundred people in both counties, but not a single person asked about my platform or my position on the “issues.” We talked often about my grandfather and my father, and most of the people I met told me about other influential people I should go see. I kissed all the right political asses, and I got the support of every majordomo and minor scion in the Democratic organization in both counties. I heard lots of stories about political campaigns, and Nelson recounted the local political history of candidates and elections for the past 50 years--several times.

Harley Fancher was my personal tutor in Carroll County and served the same function there, despite the fact that he was a state employee and arguably covered by the federal Hatch Act. I learned the local lore of the Congressional campaigns of Claude Fuller, Clyde Ellis, Bill Fulbright, and Jim Trimble, and each of the stories made clear arguments. Fuller had become rich through politics and arrogant in office; his political career ended in the 1930s when the powerless responded by laughing at him, confirming that "laughter is the pallbearer of fame." Ellis was somewhat of a hero after defeating Fuller, representing the New Deal and a populist voice manifested in support for rural electrical cooperatives against the big private power companies. Fulbright, who followed Ellis in 1942, had overcome the "silver spoon" image by once ordering two hamburgers with "lots of onions" on a campaign swing through town, wearing a plaid shirt, and confirming that he was "just plain Bill." Trimble, who served from 1945 until 1967, still lived and commanded local respect as an elder statesman.

I made the required pilgrimage to meet with Jim Trimble, the former member of Congress who lived in Carroll County, and secured his endorsement. We had lunch at a small cafe on the Berryville square, and afterward, sitting on a bench on the town square, he gave me two bits of advice. First, he said, "See all the people." Second, he added, "Don't ever do anything in politics that would embarrass your mama." I certainly did the first; I am unsure about the second.

I went door-to-door begging for votes in the towns of Berryville, Eureka Springs, Green Forest, and Huntsville. I worked plant gates, business districts, pool halls, country stores, and livestock sale barns. I hummed harmony with the back-up singers of democracy. Thomas Jefferson would have been proud, or maybe just amused.

In May, after two months of politicking, I took my final exams and celebrated my twenty-first birthday by registering to vote and driving to Little Rock to file as a candidate for the House of Representatives. I was, not surprisingly, unopposed for the Democratic nomination. Rutherford began implementing our original campaign plan by issuing frequent press releases on assorted pseudo-issues of the moment. In one stunt, we went to Washington and somehow got appointments with both Senator John L. McClellan and Senator J. William Fulbright. Lunch in the Senate Dining Room with both Senators was a highlight of the trip. We talked about Arkansas politics and a range of issues. Rutherford’s press release of the lunch recast the small talk as discussions I had with both Senators on education, economic development, health care, and natural resources policy.

I cannot now recall what was actually said during that visit, but I remember vividly another event that afternoon. As I sat outside the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History drinking lemonade, a pigeon shat upon my head, a commentary on my campaign rhetoric and an omen of my political future.

Back home, I shamelessly joined the Jaycees and the Farm Bureau. I tried to chew Red Man tobacco with the boys and once drank untaxed whiskey with a fellow whose parents must have been first cousins. I visited personally with a majority of the voters in both counties. I was "just plain Steve," the only contribution I took was from the Action Committee for Rural Electrification, and I laughed at a lot of jokes that would now be considered "politically incorrect" but were not so at that time and in that place. I got a new perspective on Burke's concept of identification.

I learned about politics.

Just as I was beginning classes in September for my senior year, the general election campaign began in earnest. Patrick opened with a well-designed and color-coordinated media blitz produced and paid for by the Rockefeller organization and the state Republican Party. One of his newspaper ads, “Compare the Candidates . . . The Choice is Clear,” was a side-by-side graphic with copy touting him as a farmer and educator, and my occupation was listed as “None”; he was married with two children, while I was single; he had served two terms, and my experience was listed as “None”; he had a college degree, while I was a “Student.”

Pretty clever, I thought, and true. Where was Cicero when I needed him?

My campaign materials included a few yard signs and bumper stickers for name recognition and crude newspaper and radio ads that were equally devoid of political theory or discussion of complex issues. I did manage to counter Patrick’s experience ad with one of my own design on the issue. I discovered and publicized that he had been officially recorded as “absent or not voting” on 263 recorded roll calls during the last legislative session. This was a cheap shot, but an effective one. It was probably about average for all legislators, and most of the votes were on minor amendments or budget bills that had passed without opposition. Nonetheless, I brazenly published the “fact” in the newspaper, and the radio ads featured a simulated oral roll call with no answer when Patrick’s name was called, followed by the “clerk” calling, “Where is Representative Patrick? Where is Representative Patrick?” Patrick foolishly tried to explain that the missed votes were on minor and unimportant bills and amendments. My rejoinder was, “Maybe these bills aren’t important to Danny Patrick, but every bill is important to the people of this district, and every vote will be important to Representative Smith.”

Thank you, Aristotle.

I gave only one political speech during the campaign, at the Carroll County Democratic Rally at the fairgrounds. I doubt that I said anything of substance there, since I didn’t at any other time during the campaign. I did, however, capture several hundred enthusiastic voters. I was seated on the platform next to Mrs. Jim Trimble, wife of the aged former Congressional representative. She was obviously chilled by the evening October air, and I was unaccustomed to wearing a coat and tie, so I placed my jacket around her shoulders. After the rally I got lots of encouragement and pledges of support, but no one commented about the erudition of my formal remarks.

I also met Patrick in an amicable “debate” at a rural Grange Hall in Madison County, but we both talked about what good guys we were and how much we were concerned that the district have effective representation. Afterward, a number of the audience members told me stories about my great-grandfather and my grandfather, and two women introduced me to their children who had been delivered by my father.

I think I won the debate.

These two speaking experiences also provided a window into the women's political underground that might be missed by the casual ethnographer examining the "man's world" of hill country politics. Although no woman had ever been elected to county or state office from Madison County, that did not mean women were disenfranchised or disempowered. My mother never made speeches or even said much to support my candidacy, but she was an effective walking enthymeme, an efficient conductor for the ethos of the family connection. In fact, women were the political oracles of the realm, providing insightful assessments of character, setting the agenda for issues, and serving as the primary channel for political information among the electorate.

When I went campaigning door-to-door during the day, I talked with women at home and left campaign materials with them. When I worked shopping centers, I talked primarily with women. Women organized political gatherings, and women election officials were the predominant force in conducting the voting process in the wards and townships. Women deputies actually ran the county offices while their officeholding husbands loitered, campaigned, or farmed. Women held the real power. I was a polite and respectful young man.

I did little to educate the voters on the issues of the day, but they gave me a fine political education. Charles Whorton became my political mentor during my first campaign. He taught me everything I needed to know about political campaigning--but not nearly all he knew. I learned how he identified the political affiliation of new residents and worked hard to make sure that every eligible Democratic voter was registered. I learned how he reviewed the voter registration lists to identify Democratic voters who might be in a nursing home or out of the county on election day and made sure they received absentee ballots. I learned that he didn’t have to steal elections, because he earned them the old-fashioned way.

I also learned a lot about Whorton's politics. He regularly made the rounds to visit the patients in the hospital; he attended the funeral of every Democrat in the county; he organized pie suppers for families whose homes had been destroyed by fire; he actively recruited young candidates for vacancies on the ticket to keep the organization alive; he implemented a voluntary social welfare program that surpassed the New Deal and waged a war on poverty that surpassed the Great Society. He did not give long speeches about his political platform, deconstruct texts, take scientific polls, run ANOVAs, or lose elections.

Patrick’s media campaign probably cost about $10,000. My entire campaign, including gas and filing fees, cost $1,600. I carried both counties and received 54% of the vote. I don’t mean to imply that public speaking and paid political advertising have no effect in political campaigns; they might sometimes make a difference. I don’t mean to imply that issues are always irrelevant in campaigns; they might sometimes make a difference. I don’t mean to imply that everything taught in political science and political communication courses is useless; nevertheless, I did fail a course in Public Opinion at the University that semester.

I took a semester off from my undergraduate studies and took the oath of office in January as the youngest member ever elected to the Arkansas House of Representatives. I had learned about political campaigns, but I did not yet understand politics. My education was about to continue.

While I had learned that local political campaigns were personal, I knew state government would be different. I knew that important legislation would be considered on its merits and passed in the public interest by the force of sound arguments.

Wrong again.

Okay, so I didn't know anything. Hell, I was just faking it! I gave a few fine speeches in the House and even managed to write and pass the first state legislation to designate and protect a Scenic River, established a legislative intern program for college students, co-sponsored the Resolution ratifying the Constitutional Amendment giving 18-year-old citizens the right to vote, and co-sponsored bills for Governor Bumpers to establish a statewide kindergarten program and a scholarship program for medical students who agreed to practice in rural areas.

I knew, however, that the bills had passed despite my impassioned rhetoric and because I had developed some friendships in the legislature--Speaker Ray Smith, Parliamentarian Talbot Field, Chief Clerk Jim Childers, Rudy Moore, Jim Shaver, Wayne Hampton, Mack McLarty, Tom Sparks, Jody Mahony, Julian Streett, Ernest Cunningham, Bill Foster, Cal Ledbetter, and Nick Wilson. Representative Boyce Alford, an outrageous conservative, and Representative Veda Sheid, one of the two women members, often helped me because I had been in college with their sons. I hung out with interesting rubes and tried to be a young boy in an old boy system, eating enough rubber chicken at legislative dinners to cause cancer in laboratory animals. No one seemed to have much interest in the ideas of Max Weber or Stephen Toulmin. I learned that government was only politics and learned again that politics was mostly personal.

Open and responsive government had been a plank in my original platform, and delivering on that was both wise and fun. It worked well to establish name recognition, and it allowed me to pretend that I was "a man of the people" instead of a tool of the machine. There was really no grand design or rhetorical strategy, but I had learned some effective tactics in a college course taught by Ernie Deane, one of the few undergraduate professors I had encountered who could rise above the textbook and one of the best storytellers I had ever met. I did not know then that we would become good friends and later work together on issues such as higher education, historic preservation policy, and environmental protection or that he would have considerable influence on my approach to college teaching.

I had managed to win an election and complete a legislative session without having consciously developed or articulated any clear political philosophy. Transcripts of my weekly radio program and copies of my weekly newspaper column read like a politically-neutered civics textbook. When the interest groups reported their analyses of the session, I learned that I had compiled a 100% record of support for Governor Dale Bumpers’ legislative program, a 100% voting record on the Arkansas Education Association Legislative Report Card, a 100% voting record on issues of interest to Arkansas Consumer Research, and an 87% positive score from the AFL-CIO (even though there was not a single union shop in my district). Very interesting, I thought. I returned to school, finished my degree in Speech Communication, was invited by the University President to sit in the VIP Section at my own graduation (which I cut), and was talked into beginning the master’s program by a great teacher named Jimmie Rogers (who probably regrets that encouragement daily and now empathizes with Dr. Frankenstein).

It was about this time that I began to suspect that I was developing the early warning symptoms of a political philosophy. In an American Public Address class, I seemed to find Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Robert Ingersoll, Eugene Debs, Clarence Darrow, Robert LaFollette, and Franklin Roosevelt more interesting than Jonathan Edwards, John Calhoun, Russell Conwell, and Albert Beveridge. The dialectic between power and liberty, between the materialistic and the moralistic, was a convincing narrative. I had long since learned that politics was personal, and I was discovering that most of my personal heroes and friends were liberal Democrats. However, I also had a certain appreciation for George Washington Plunkett.

I filed for reelection to the House in March, 1972, and was again the machine candidate and unopposed for the nomination, although I did draw a Republican opponent, Bob Cypert of Eureka Springs. Meanwhile, I was elected as a Delegate to the Democratic State Convention in June, and at the last minute decided I would run for Delegate from the Third Congressional District to the Democratic National Convention.

Wilbur Mills was a candidate for President that year; he was then known as "The Powerful Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee" and was not yet famous as "The Midnight Aquanaut of the Potomac Tidal Basin and Sometimes Go-Go Dancer." Everyone at the state convention was officially seeking to be a Mills delegate, but the scam was so transparent that an attempt was made to have all candidates announce who was their “second choice."

I was not-too-secretly for George McGovern, and I got to know a young McGovern staffer named Bill Clinton. Clinton asked me to withdraw from the contest, because he thought the three closet McGovern candidates would split the vote and allow a victory by the closet Wallace candidate. What? Did this Yalie Rhodes Scholar think I just got off the punkin wagon yesterday? I allowed as to how he should get his other horses to withdraw if he wanted, because I was going to win the election. You see, Charles Whorton was at the convention, and we had already put together a coalition of the 18 rural counties with enough votes to assure my election over all three opponents who were handicapped by living in cities in SMSAs. Clinton and I then became pals.

On my way to the Democratic National Convention in Miami I was travelling with Jesse McGehee, Chair of the Carroll County Democratic Committee, who was an Alternate. He waited about 20 minutes before asking me point blank who I really favored for President. I hesitated in answering, because I needed his support in the fall election and didn’t wish to alienate him by fessing up. Then I screwed up a combination of courage and foolishness and said, “George McGovern.” He straightened, paused, and said, “Thank God! I was afraid you were for Scoop Jackson. I’ve been sending McGovern money ever since he announced, because he’s the only one smart enough to figure out that we can do without that damn war.”

Whew.

At the convention, I worked openly for McGovern, meeting daily with and taking my orders from Pierre Salinger to plot strategy and corral Arkansas delegates on procedural and platform issues. I schmoozed with Gary Hart and Rick Sterns in the command post trailers and wanted to believe it was a new world order as I strolled through a dope fog in the fun house of Flamingo Park. I talked with Hubert Humphrey, Shirley Chisholm, Fred Harris, Willie Brown, Frank Mankiewicz, Hodding Carter, Senator Fulbright, Sissy Farenthold, Abbie Hoffman, Gloria Steinem, Jesse Jackson, Warren Beatty, Marlo Thomas, and a host of other cultural and counter-cultural icons. I delivered eight of 27 Arkansas delegates to McGovern on the key vote (allocation of California Delegates) that assured his nomination. Mills withdrew and released his delegates. When Arkansas announced its votes for president, McGovern got one vote. You guessed it. I thought I was hot shit. I thought McGovern would carry Arkansas and win the election.

Wrong on several counts.

When I returned to Arkansas and its own peculiar brand of political reality, I found one of the newspapers in my district chronicling my convention exploits in an editorial entitled, “Demo or Pinko?” This was not a good sign. Orval Faubus in Madison County and Gerald L. K. Smith in Carroll County, my two most famous constituents, were openly talking against me. Wilbur Mills’ staff threatened to squelch a Hill-Burton Grant to expand the local hospital in which my dad had a major interest. A member of the Democratic Central Committee had endorsed my Republican opponent.

I knew that Charles Whorton was waiting to see me, so I went to the courthouse the next day. I walked into his office expecting to be dropped from the ticket, and he looked up smiling and said, “Well, if that crazy son of a bitch gets elected, we’ll sure have an in to the White House!”

No problem.

I spent the fall campaign pressing the flesh with voters and sending lots of important letters on official House of Representatives stationary. Typical of the message was one reading:

I was joined on the campaign trail in Madison County that year by Whorton running for County Judge and two new additions to the ticket, Ralph Baker running for Sheriff and Herb Hathorn running for County Clerk; I was now a seasoned veteran giving the tour to the latest neophytes (who are still in office more than twenty years later). I worked the back roads, front porches, coffee shops, the beauty shoppes, and the laundromats.

I had a lot of help from my friends in that campaign. Steve Engstrom (a law student) distributed materials door-to-door in places I wouldn't have time to go, and Danae Columbus (a fellow graduate student) pitched my candidacy in places I couldn't be seen going. Henry Woods (an undergraduate friend) stood in the rain to work a polling place at the Green Forest Fire Station. Judge John Maberry placed my campaign signs in the window of his law office in Eureka Springs, in clear violation of the canons of judicial ethics concerning partisan political activity. Crescent Dragonwagon (now a respectable innkeeper and author of some note) supported my candidacy in Down Home News, an off-beat tabloid with considerable circulation among the artsy-fartsy crowd, and Lucilla Garrett (a fellow graduate student) organized a "coffee with the candidate" meeting in her Eureka Springs antique store that assured me of the Jewish vote in the district--all three of them. Jim Vaughan (a farmer in Prairie Township) delivered the vote in the Hindsville area in ways I will never know. Ted Larimer, the editor who had attacked me earlier, eventually wrote a strong editorial praising my legislative accomplishments, endorsing my reelection, and calling me "the Outstanding Freshman Legislator," . . . but only after I had spent a lot of time practicing my suck-up skills.

Whorton put the machine in gear, and I was reelected with 62% of the vote, again carrying both counties in a virtual landslide.

That campaign was an epiphany of sorts. I will always remember a conversation with Buster Morris, a farmer and the local political pooh-bah of South Yocum Township in Carroll County. Standing in his barnyard and asking for his support, I was treated to a long dissertation about what a damn low-life scumbag Richard Nixon was, about how the damn Republicans never cared about the common people, about how the whole damn country of Vietnam wasn't worth the life of one Arkansas farm boy, and about how he was damn glad that George McGovern was telling the truth.

Damn! Me, too.

I had learned that I was probably a liberal (whatever that means) and that it was either of little concern or of some advantage with my constituents. I also learned that Aristotle's division of logos, pathos, and ethos were hardly ever distinct on the hustings or in the minds of rural voters.

In the 1973-1974 legislative sessions I made it my mission to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I introduced a package of aggressive consumer legislation drafted by Fred Cowan of Arkansas Consumer Research (later Attorney General of Kentucky) and open government proposals drafted by Common Cause, sponsored a few bills for the ACLU, opposed capital punishment, helped kill a right-wing proposal for a loyalty oath for state employees, co-authored the unsuccessful resolution to ratify the ERA, and generally raised all kinds of hell. I became a media darling, with a flurry of editorials, positive cartoons, and frequent guest spots on the AFL-CIO radio program and local news and public affairs television shows. "Public office," I proclaimed, "should be a public trust--not a public trough." I regularly told corporate lobbyists to jump up my ass. When the state League of Women Voters did not have the funds to pay their lobbyist, Fran Smith, I put her on my payroll as a research assistant to ascertain the opinion of legislators on bills endorsed and opposed by the League.

The capitol press corps at that time was outstanding, and I counted Ernie Dumas, Max Brantley, Doug Smith, Mike Trimble, George Douthit, Steve Barnes, Sylvia Spencer, Bill Simmons, John Bennett, Herbie Byrd, Bob Lancaster, George Wells, and Brenda Blagg among my friends. I also enjoyed the friendship and political support of several new members of the General Assembly, including Richard Mays, Henry Wilkins, Mike Wilson, Jim Lassiter, Henry Osterloh, and Robert Johnston. These names will mean nothing to most readers, but they were an important part of my legislative career, and they still mean much to me.

I continued to rely on the advice and counsel of my seatmate Rudy Moore, and I developed a unique relationship with my other seatmate, Napoleon Bonaparte Murphy, who was an old-time character representing Ashley County on the Louisiana border. After giving some rousing speech in the Morning Hour, "Nap" was frequently absent from the chamber, and he always instructed me to "vote" his machine during his naps in the cloak room. As you might guess, Representative Murphy had a rather progressive voting record that session; it was almost identical with mine. When we returned for a Special Session in July 1974, Murphy expressed his appreciation for my judgement and again instructed me to make sure he was voted when he was away from his desk or out of the chamber. His voting record must not have been an issue with his constituents, who have continued to return him from that district.

A few of my bills even passed that session, but I was not especially effective. It was quite easy to make fine speeches and be a media star; it took much effort to build and maintain the personal relationships with legislators necessary to actually enact laws, and I was too young to have developed the required patience. Furthermore, getting one's picture in the paper with cute quotes does not particularly endear one to legislative colleagues. The academic literature misses all of this. Scholars in political science, mass media, journalism, and political communication examine media artifacts, stump speeches, and floor debates with all the relevance of a mechanical engineer analyzing the tail fins of a '60 Cadillac to understand why it cruises so well. Shade tree mechanics often do a better job. Passing legislation is hard work in applied interpersonal communication. Still, I was having a great time and doing a little good in the process.

During this session of the legislature I was accepted into the Ph.D. program at Northwestern, so I had no intention of seeking reelection. Judge Whorton had been good to his word. He got a young candidate who broadened the appeal for the Democratic slate and a Representative who always supported legislation that helped the district, and he never said anything about the speeches I made or the legislation I sponsored. When the filing period approached in 1974, I called Whorton to inform him that I would not be a candidate, because I was having a wonderful time studying free speech with Frank Haiman and contemporary culture with Irv Rein. He refused to accept that suggestion.

“Judge,” I said, “I don’t have time to make a campaign. Besides, I'd feel like a Chicago carpetbagger.”

To that he replied, “You just file; I’ll take care of the election.”

I did not run, although I had no doubt that he could have assured another election victory.

I retired from politics as a 25-year-old has-been, but it didn’t last long. In the fall of 1974, I commuted between Evanston and Arkansas to manage 28-year-old Bill Clinton’s close-but-no-cigar Congressional campaign against a right-wing Republican incumbent. Clinton was the brightest political candidate I had ever known. He believed in and campaigned on the issues, but that was not enough. We carried the 15 smallest counties in the district, lost the six largest counties, and ended up with only 49.5%. Still, I think it was a great campaign, and I learned much about politics on a larger scale--that it was just like politics on a smaller scale. After the election, I finished my coursework, passed my comps, taught some speech classes, and wrote a political column for a progressive community newspaper.

In 1975, Governor David Pryor appointed me as a Delegate to a state Constitutional Convention that never actually met, because the enabling legislation was invalidated. Pryor might have chosen me as one of the 27 Delegates strictly on the merit of constitutional knowledge, or he might have remembered that I was one of a very few elected officials who openly supported him in his unsuccessful 1972 Senate race against John McClellan, or it might have had some connection to the fact that my close friend and former Legislative Assistant, Steve Nickles, was now one of his top staff policy advisors. You just never know about these things.

In 1976, I was considering making a race for the State Senate, when Clinton asked me to manage his campaign for Attorney General. He won without a runoff in a field of three and immediately named me as his Chief of Staff and Legislative Liaison. He might have made the appointment based on some notion that I had considerable legal or managerial experience--or it might have been because we were best friends, and I still had some close relationships with key legislators and members of the capitol press corps. Whatever the reason, his entire legislative package passed, he did a great job in office, I did a pretty fair job of flacking his achievements, and he became one of the most visible and most popular politicians in the state.

It was an interesting time for me, too. I wrote some fairly good speeches, helped craft official opinions that expanded freedom of expression, coordinated a legal and professional staff of 70, published a couple of law review articles, and worked a deal for time off for summer coursework in First Amendment issues at Harvard Law School. Legal staff comrades Ellen Brantley, Sam Bratton, Brady Anderson, Mac Norton, B. J. McCoy, Buddy Rotenberry, Frank Newell, Royce Griffin, John Fincher, Rodney Parham, Wally Nixon, Catherine Anderson, and Joe Purvis were good at their jobs and even better after work. Together with Clinton, we protected consumers, postured with utilities, built a record, and bragged about it. In that crusade, I found that folks like Plato and Habermas were useless at best.

My education continued during this time, much of it coming from what might appear to have been an unlikely source. During my glory daze in the House in 1973, I led a losing battle against a new death penalty statute. After a colorful and futile effort, I received a kind note and a luncheon invitation from W. R. Stephens, who told me how he, too, was against capital punishment and how much he enjoyed my valiant folly. "Mr. Witt," as he was respectfully known, was the Godfather of Arkansas politics. He was a self-made millionaire, former head of Arkansas-Louisiana Gas Company, co-founder of the largest off-Wall Street bond house, and long-time political king-maker of Governors, U. S. Senators, and Members of Congress. He was very country and very smart.

Shortly after I went to work in the Attorney General's Office, Mr. Witt called to invite me to lunch in his private dining room, something that became a regular and enjoyable habit during the next four years. Our unwritten social contract was that he would invite powerful friends or political has-beens from the Old Guard of the 1950s to spin yarns about politics in the days of yore, and I had to bring an interesting Young Turk currently active in state government, someone with passionate opinions and easy loquacity. We became good friends, and I learned much about people and politics. He never asked for anything but provocative conversation, and I always got the better of that deal.

In 1978, I also filed as a candidate for Delegate to the state Constitutional Convention from Carroll and Madison Counties. The voters did not press for my views about constitutional reform, and I did not run ads or give speeches showing how much I knew about Montesquieu. They were not concerned that I had not been domiciled in the district since I had graduated from high school. They did not seem bothered when my opponent, a popular mayor and newspaper editor from Carroll County, had hired a photographer to track me so he could run my bearded picture in his ads depicting me as the Prince of Darkness and a known hippie sympathizer. I led a field of four with 46%, then won easily in the runoff. I had again been Albert King's grandson, Austin Smith's son, Charlie Whorton's boy, and the machine candidate, campaigning personally for only four days and receiving 92% of the vote in Madison County.

When the Convention organized, I was elected Vice President of the Convention, defeating an old pol car dealer named Joe Bill Hackler. That election and my later successes in the convention were the results of knowing the parliamentary rules of procedure and having the support of such fine friends among the Delegates as Archie Schaffer, Bob Phillips, Tom McRae, Ray Abramson, Georgia Elrod, Greg Wilson, and Wooten Epes. During the convention, I paid particular attention to the Declaration of Rights and was able to secure adoption of resolutions for provisions protecting freedom of speech, press, assembly, and petition, freedom of religion, and new clauses providing for a constitutional right of individual privacy and for freedom of information about government activities and records.

Bill Clinton ran for Governor that year, touted his record and rode his name recognition as Attorney General, defeated four other Democratic candidates without a runoff, and faced only token Republican opposition in the general election. He became the nation’s youngest governor at 32. I had two jobs during the campaign: (1) making sure that there were no problems in the Attorney General's office while Clinton was on the campaign trail; and (2) working with pollster Richard Morris and media guru Marvin Chernoff to provide artillery and air support for Clinton's county-by-county ground attack. Clinton was a perfect candidate. Rudy Moore, Jimmie Lou Fisher, Sam Boyce, Rob Wiley, Ted Douglas, Barbara Rudolph, Ben Allen, Mack McLarty, Wally DeRoeck, Jane Wilson, and others at the campaign headquarters ran a campaign that devastated the opposition. A good time was had by all.

When Clinton assumed office as Governor, I was appointed Executive Assistant. He brought considerable energy to state government, presented an ambitious legislative program, articulated an exciting vision, and appointed outstanding people to staff and state agency positions. It appeared that the torch had been passed and that Camelot was back. Or so we all thought for a moment.

Among other duties, I was also responsible for planning and implementing state policy on natural resources and community and economic development. That meant state dollars would be targeted to help small farms and minority enterprises instead of building more empty industrial parks and chasing smokestacks. It meant that the big utilities and their nuclear plants would be under fire while state dollars encouraged solar and conservation as official policy. I had a lot of help from my friends: Bob Wise and Michael Barker at the Council of Governors' Policy Advisors, Jack Brizius and Bert Wakeley at the National Governors' Association, an outstanding professional staff in the Governor’s Office, especially Donna Yearby, Kay Arnold, Julie McDonald, and Jeanne Jackson, and numerous accomplices in state agencies. We almost sought out opportunities to confront the financial powers, the big utilities, corporate polluters, and entrenched bureaucrats.

The press reports of my later career were somewhat mixed, and, significantly, most who opposed the policies argued ad hominem rather than on the issues. The week after three cabinet heads rolled, one newspaper called me "Bill Clinton's Dr. No." During the 1980 campaign, the Republican nominee, Frank White, made a campaign speech solely on the proposition that I should be fired; the Arkansas Gazette editorialized that I was more qualified to be governor than was White. The leading liberal columnist called me "a bearded radical"; the leading conservative columnist said I was quite intelligent, even "brilliant," but an impractical visionary without a lick of common sense. One scholarly book did assess my role in the political and policy processes, but another settled for concluding that I was a "witty populist" who annoyed conservative legislators and provoked one powerful senator to attack me as a “whiz kid, deputy governor.”

None argued that I was wrong on the issues, yet style is substance.

I had finally developed a political philosophy, but I had forgotten a lot about politics as the art of the personal and the art of the possible. Too often I fumed for a moral cause and forgot that being right was not enough. I was 29-years-old, and I mistakenly thought we were on a mission. I saw politics as a dialectic between good and evil and had, unfortunately, forgotten that successful implementation of policies had more to do with personal relationships than planning documents. I went to too many meetings and traveled too little with the Governor on the rubber chicken circuit. I had started drinking my own political bath water, forgetting that, to be effective, policies must not only be solid, they must be sold.

It had been an interesting odyssey. At the National Conference on Alternative State and Local Public Policies, held at Bryn Mawr in 1979, staffers for Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne and Cleveland Mayor Dennis Kucinich were ranting about process and how they were determined to destroy the old machines in their cities. They were silly zealots, true believers with a message. I publicly scoffed at their misdirected energies, admitted being a product of the local political machine, and admonished them to focus on results. They should have listened; I should have remembered.

Perhaps power, like testosterone, impairs the functioning of the brain by blocking the firing of key synapses, blurring perception, killing memory cells, and leading to rhetorical escalation. When pushing for environmental regulations to restrict clear-cutting, for example, I publicly branded the big timber companies as “corporate criminals.” That was rhetorically true, it was good copy, and the Sierra Club loved it. It also put the governor in a politically untenable position; if he approved the restrictions he became a co-conspirator against economic growth and private property, and if he did not act he appeared to have sold out the planet to the pine tree plutocrats. I was disappointed -- but I should not have been surprised -- when he puckered up and kissed the ass of the timber industry.

I was now taking politics personally instead of making it personal. It was time to cut bait.

On reflection, I was disappointed in my failure to practice politics as I knew it to be. A greater tragedy, though, would have been to have followed the reverse course, which I saw others pursue, from seeing politics as principles and means to seeking public office and power as ultimate ends. Perhaps there are so few really good politicians because the requisite skills--thinking votes and thinking visions--are binary and mutually exclusive. If I ever get around to developing a cogent political theory of campaigns and governance, this will certainly be a prime axiom.

I closed out my decade-long quest in 1980 by serving on the Democratic National Platform Committee, and I helped write my last speech for Bill Clinton at the 1980 Democratic National Convention in New York City, a spirited battle cry that David Broder of the Washington Post called the best of the convention. Carter was nominated in New York and lost to Ronald Reagan; Clinton lost the general election in Arkansas and spent two years in the political penalty box before coming back in 1982 stronger than ever. He eventually served five terms as governor and has done right well for himself since then.

Having already become too much the professor and too interested in ideas to be very effective, I walked away from politics two weeks before the 1980 election, finished my dissertation, and became a school teacher in 1982. The decade from 1970 to 1980 was a wonderful time to be in politics, but the 1980s were to prove dreadful for youthful idealism and most of the principles I had come to hold dear. I do not miss the political arena, but I still find it both fascinating and frustrating at times. Occasionally, I even do some political consulting. Seldom do I have to disabuse myself of the fantasy of running for office again. Mike Hathorn, one of my former students, now represents Madison County in the Arkansas House of Representatives.

I do teach a course in Political Communication, still covering the literature and addressing the usual topics, but the real subtext is personal and probably unlike those taught at Annenberg, Duke, and the Kennedy School. But, then, what do I know about politics? I teach at a state university in the boonies, and I have never been interviewed by Ted Koppel on Nightline.

What I do know is that the term political science is a grand misnomer. Political art or political alchemy would be more accurate. My experiences in the trenches also taught me that the components of knowledge and truth are not compartmentalized in the categories that constitute academic departments. It convinced me that most of the political communication research asks the wrong questions, examines the wrong artifacts, and misses the real acts and interactions of political communication. I advise my students who want to "do politics" to avoid courses in public administration, mass communication, and critical theory and, instead, to study power and personal relationships through courses in cultural anthropology, sociology, social psychology, history, classics, folklore, country music, and even some communication courses. I advise them to go to the local Wal-Mart, observe the shoppers, and imagine giving a meaningful political speech to that constituency. I advise them to go hunting where the ducks are, and several of them are now camped out at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and in various executive departments of the federal government.

Reading the research literature and textbooks in political communication is probably not fatal to doing politics. It is sometimes interesting, it won't be held against you, and it can be overcome with practice; however, it offers little of value in getting elected or getting things done once elected. There are better stories to be told and many stories to be told better. Some of them even have the added advantage of being true.