First In His Class (100 page)

The Washington Post
, my professional home since 1977, has given me the freedom to develop my own style, and for that I thank the editors who set the paper's tone over the years: Ben Bradlee, the late Howard Simons, Leonard Downie, Richard Harwood, Bob Kaiser, and Bob Woodward. Harwood, Kaiser, and Woodward have been special colleagues, knowing when to protect me and when to push me. They did both during my work on this book, while also providing intelligent readings of the manuscript. Bill Hamilton was generous with his encouragement and made it easier for me to write the in-depth articles that inspired this book. Any writer would be lucky to have a colleague as supportive as Maralee Schwartz, who boosted my spirits countless times. Editors Steve Luxenberg, Karen DeYoung, Fred Barbash, Brian Kelly, and Bill Elsen also helped me along the way. I feel a special debt of gratitude to Michael Weisskopf, my longtime pal and colleague, who worked with me on several articles that informed this book, and to his wife Judith Katz, who put up with me, excessive use of towels and all, during my early reporting trips to Washington while I was still living in Austin, Texas.

Other
Post
journalists whose work educated me include David Broder, E. J. Dionne, Dan Balz, Tom Edsall, Ann Devroy, Mike Isikoff, Sharon LaFraniere, David Von Drehle, Ruth Marcus, Al Kamen, Martha Sherrill, Laura Blumenfeld, Lloyd Grove, Susan Schmidt, Howard Schneider, Gene Weingarten, Donnie Radcliff, and Chuck Babcock. I also learned more about my subject from other journalists: Mark Halperin of ABC , a good friend and invaluable source of information; Adam Nagourney and Bill Nichols of
USA Today;
Walter Shapiro of
Esquire;
Garry Wills of the
New York Review of Books;
Priscilla Painton of
Time;
Ron Brownstein, David Lauter, Cathleen Decker, and William Rempel of the
Los Angeles Times;
Gwen Ifill, Jeff Gerth, Alessandra Stanley, Maureen Dowd, and Michael Kelly of the
New York Times;
Matt Cooper and Donald Baer of
U.S. News;
Jeff Birnbaum of
The Wall Street Journal;
Curtis Wilkie of
The Boston Globe
and John Brummett of the
Arkansas Times.
Of Brummett, Ernest Dumas, Max Brantley, and many of their colleagues in Arkansas journalism, I think it is time for an outsider to say that they did a fine job examining Clinton during his gubernatorial years. The notion that Clinton got an easy ride before the national press corps came along is a presumptuous canard of East Coast journalism.

During the course of this project, I was lucky to have the help of several brilliant young researchers: foremost Katherine McCarron in Washington, and also Jennifer Pitts in Washington, Sarah Maraniss in Austin, Dan Alexander in London, and Peter Green in Prague. Lucy Shackelford and Elizabeth Hudson of the
Post
were also generous with their research assistance, as was the entire
Post
library staff. Other helpful librarians were Jon K. Reynolds at Georgetown University's Lauinger Library; Ben Primer, archivist at Princeton's Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library; Betty Austin, Fulbright archivist at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville; and Linda Pine, special collections librarian at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock. Thanks also to Mary Nell Turner, town historian of Hope, and Inez Cline, her counterpart in Hot Springs.

Alice Mayhew at Simon & Schuster, in guiding me through my first book, was everything I had hoped a book editor would be: encouraging, coaxing, intelligent, excited, and exacting. Her refined red pen, and the black pen of her calm deputy, Eric Steel, instructed me in the art of long-form narrative. Thanks also to Ann Adelman and Lydia Buechler, first-rate copy editors. Rafe Sagalyn, my agent, was always generous and supportive.

My work in England was made infinitely easier by the good-humored hospitality of the Harris branch of the Maraniss extended family: Pat Harris, Francis Harris, and Angela Harris. Special thanks to John Harris for paving the way for me at Oxford. Harry Walsh made it possible for a computer illiterate to write a book. Michael Norman, my old dear friend, pushed me to write and kept me going when I doubted myself, as did John Feinstein, Chip Brown, Neil Henry, Richard Cramer, Mike Connolly, Mike Tackett, Elsa Walsh, Steve Amos, Jon Kalb, Don McCarthy, Henry Bryan, Maddy Biais, John Katzenbach, Blaine Harden, and Frank Roloff.

Two great editors, my parents, Mary and Elliott Maraniss, came bursting out of retirement to devote themselves to this book. It was a joy to decipher my father's illegible brilliance and to see how my mother could snap a sentence into shape with one precise editor's mark. Maggie, our sweet old sheepdog, stayed home with me during my long year of writing, making it less lonely. And most of all my thanks go to Linda, who supported me through it all, reading and editing every word late at night on the computer screen, sitting in my wobbly, screws-loose chair. She and Andrew and Sarah are the reasons my wheels did not come off. They are not everything, as the old Packer coach would say, they are the only thing.

INDEX

abortion, 293, 434, 435

Abrams, Creighton W., 182

Achtenberg, Hannah, 126, 129, 146

Adams, Ruth M., 257

Addington, Ron, 297-99, 305-6, 319, 334, 335, 337

AFL-CIO, 321,348, 395

Agnew, Spiro, 232

Albery, John, 142, 213

alcoholism, in Clinton family, 14, 38-39, 51, 421-22

Alexis, Anik “Nicki,” 211, 212-13

Alford, Dale, 75

Alinsky, Saul, 257

Allen, Bill, 76

Aller, Frank, 104

draft resistance by, 126-27, 150-51, 164, 177, 202, 243-44, 260

at Oxford, 132, 140, 153, 159, 161, 167, 196, 197, 216, 217, 219, 220, 224

suicide of, 259-61, 436

Alsdorf, Robert, 263, 264, 286

Altshuler, Fred, 309, 311, 314-15, 316, 381, 393-94

American Oxonian,
185, 242-43, 345-46, 436, 448, 463

Amis, Martin, 139

Anderson, Jack, 311 -12

Anderson, Sam, Jr., 422

Anthony, Beryl, 346

Anthony, John Ed, 366, 376

Arkansas, 13, 84, 103, 143-44, 179, 266, 280-81

Clinton as attorney-general of, 350-52

Clinton as governor of, 358-67, 376-86, 390-91, 405-7, 409-13, 430, 436, 448-49, 452-53, 454, 456

Clinton elected attorney-general of, 340, 341, 346-49

Clinton's campaigns for governorship of, 352-57, 376, 384-88, 391-92, 394-395, 397, 399-404, 407-9, 429, 430-431, 454-57

Clinton's failed 1974 congressional campaign in, 294-306, 319-38, 339, 348

Clinton's return to, 287-89

Democratic party in, 15, 74, 75, 118, 290, 296, 304-5, 329, 331, 337, 340, 349, 403, 412, 463

election campaigns in, 74-81, 111, 112-116, 346-50

Hillary Rodham's move to, 315-18, 326-327

Republican party in, 75, 116, 166, 173, 290, 296, 305, 376, 377

Arkansas Boys State, 13-14, 42

Arkansas Education Association, 401

Arkansas Gazette, 29, 191, 325, 354, 393, 394, 401, 409, 458

Arkansas, University of, Law School at, 225, 285

Clinton as professor at, 287-94, 328, 340, 341

Clinton's draft avoidance and, 174, 180-181, 190, 198, 289, 356

Hillary Rodham as professor at, 316-18, 327-28, 341-42, 350-51, 369

Arkansas Supreme Court, 406-7

Armstrong, Bob, 274, 278, 283, 299-300, 439-40

Armstrong, William S., 118, 119, 180, 190

Arrogance of Power, The
(Fulbright), 97-98

Ashby, Kit, 52, 69, 70, 89, 90, 91, 95, 97, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 175, 224

Ayers, Lou Birchie, 25

Ayers, William, 188

Bailey, John, 228

Baiocchi, Judi, 55

Baker, Bobby, 128-29

Ballard, Karen, 421

Baran, John, 333

Bassett, Woody, 292, 327, 328, 390, 402, 448

Becker, J. Bill, 321, 363, 395, 415

Bekavac, Nancy, 233, 238-39, 240, 241, 242, 264, 285

Bell, Tom, 308, 310-12

Bentsen, Lloyd, 271

Berger, Sandy, 440, 442

Bickel, Alexander, 235

Bittker, Boris, 235

Black, Charles L, Jr., 235

blacks, 27, 29, 79, 241-42, 257

at Arkansas University Law School, 293-294

at Georgetown University, 63

at Moscow University, 211

in 1982 election, 402, 403

Texas Democrats and, 273, 281

at Yale, 237-38
see also
civil rights; school desegregation

Blagg, Brenda, 290, 332

Blair, Diane Kincaid, 296, 326, 342, 343, 369-70, 372, 390, 462, 463

Blair, James, 234, 296, 323, 331, 369-70, 371-72, 374, 416, 424, 428

Blevins, Dexter, 35

Blumenthal, Mark, 268-69, 277, 283, 284

Blythe, Andrew Jackson, 437

Blythe, Henry Leon, 26

Blythe, Thomas Jefferson, 437

Blythe, William Jefferson (father), 24-29, 78, 144, 175, 219, 326, 349, 375, 425

Blythe, Willie, 25

Bond, Julian, 267

Bone, Robert L. “Red,” 370, 371

Bork, Robert, 236-37, 238-39

Borosage, Robert, 234

Boskin, Michael, 189-90

Bowman, Bertie, 83-84, 98

Boys Nation, 37, 42, 55

Clinton's 1963 Washington visit with, 11-13, 15-20

Bradley, Bill, 93

Branch, Taylor, 183, 300, 315-16

1972 McGovern campaign work of, 265, 266, 267-68, 269, 271, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277-79, 281, 282, 283

Branchero, Jeff, 313

Branscum, Herbie, 457

Brewster, Kingman, 127

Briscoe, Dolph, 271, 273

Britt, Henry, 118, 119

Broder, David, 388

Brooke, Edward, 257-58, 259

Brown, Elliot, 263

Brown, Jerry, 339, 389

Brown, L. D., 425

Brown, Ron, 458

Browne, Nick, 134

Bryant, John, 448

Buchanan, Clara, 86

Buck, Elizabeth, 42, 43, 299

Bullock, Bob, 273

Bumpers, Dale, 322-23, 337, 340, 438

Busby, Horace, 270

Bush, George, 190, 205, 441, 448, 449, 452

Butler, Roy, 271-72

Butte, George, 101, 123, 124, 126, 133, 152, 201, 243

Butz, Earl, 330, 331

Cabe, Gloria, 391, 438, 439, 443, 445, 447, 448, 452-53, 454-55, 457

Cabe, Robert, 446

Calabresi, Guido, 235

Campbell, Craig, 350

Campbell, Tom, 51, 52-53, 61, 66-67, 70, 73, 87, 88, 97, 98, 105, 106, 108, 116, 175, 217, 224

capital punishment, 302, 434-35, 450, 453

Caplan, Thomas Mark, 52, 53-55, 56, 63, 71, 73-74, 93, 96, 105, 107, 111, 358, 461, 463

Capone, Al, 34

Cardozo, Benjamin, 71

Carmichael, Stokely, 266

Carr, Billie, 265, 266, 269, 280, 281, 299, 390, 443

Carson, Johnny, 446, 447

Carter, Jimmy, 330, 349-50, 351, 357, 376, 377, 379, 381, 388, 394

Carter administration, 359, 377

Cash, Clarence, 347, 349

Cassidy, Edith (grandmother), 21, 22, 23, 25, 30-31, 32, 49, 425

Clinton's letters to, 52, 53, 56, 60, 77-78, 83, 84, 87, 88

Cassidy, Eldridge (grandfather), 21, 22-23, 29, 30, 31, 78, 367, 406, 424, 425

Cassidy, George Washington, 437