Newswise — Eleven of the nation's top political scientists and historians gathered at the University of Arkansas in 2002 to examine the Clinton presidency from their own viewpoints. Their overwhelming consensus was the perfect title of the resulting compilation of papers — "The Clinton Riddle."
"A hundred years from now, people are still going to be trying to figure out former President Clinton, just like they are Franklin D. Roosevelt now," said Jeannie Whayne, chair of the UA history department.
She pointed out that assessing a president involves evaluating their successes and failures — many of which are not apparent until historians and political scientists have years or decades to "ravel or unravel" conflicting information.
"Our early investigation into the Clinton presidency, however, provides a strong and interdisciplinary base on which future studies may build," Whayne said.
"The Clinton Riddle," recently published by the University of Arkansas Press, is a collection of papers presented during the 2002 gathering of scholars sponsored by the Diane D. Blair Center of Southern Politics and Society and the Fulbright Institute of International Relations. The symposium was titled, "Vantage Points: Perspectives on the Clinton Presidency."
The forum was led by Donald R. Kelley, director of the Fulbright Institute; Todd Shields, director of the Blair Center; and Whayne, who is also director of the Arkansas Center for Oral and Visual History. The three professors edited papers presented at the forum into a book and wrote a conclusion based on common themes found throughout the chapters.
"We were trying to get as diverse a group of people as possible — from an intellectual, political and interdisciplinary standpoint — to take the first interdisciplinary look at those years," said Kelley.
The scholars came from the University of South Carolina, DePauw University, Stanford University, University of Miami, Columbia University, Northwestern University, Purdue University and Florida Atlantic University.
The U of A's own Randall B. Woods, John A. Cooper Sr. Distinguished Professor of Diplomacy in the Fulbright Institute of International Relations, also participated.
Kelley said, "We asked leading scholars from diverse disciplines to examine the Clinton administration from their own methodological perspectives. Ultimately, our eclectic approach provided unique insights into a very complicated president."
The overwhelming theme coming out of the forum is evident in the book's conclusion, titled "President Clinton, A Pragmatic and Defensive Player." The former president was at his best when he was forced to play defensively in both his governorship and in the White House.
Losing elections early in his political career to conservative Republicans, first to John Paul Hammerschmidt and later to Gov. Frank White, taught Clinton how to react defensively to conservative opponents.
As he sought the attorney general position in 1976, and re-election to the governor's office, Clinton appealed to the state as a whole by moderating his policies and building support among women and minorities. He continued to use this strategy throughout his political career.
Woods argues that Clinton's experiences with former Sen. J. William Fulbright may have prepared him to lead the foreign policy establishment during the 1990s, as the first post-Cold War president.
Once in the presidency, the "Comeback Kid" revealed himself as a more liberal leader than his moderate platform had portrayed. In 1996, he played defensively in altering that image to portray himself as an ideological moderate in comparison to the conservative Republican Congress.
The book concludes that Clinton owed much of his election success to support from women and minority groups. He was willing to appoint women to top governmental positions and took consistent positions on abortion, childcare and Social Security. He supported minorities in part by apologizing for America's past injustices, such as the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment, and he rescinded the dishonorable discharges of black Navy dockworkers during World War II.
While Kelley, Shields and Whayne are pleased with the different perspectives revealed during the symposium, they realize that "The Clinton Riddle" is only the beginning in the quest to fully understand President Clinton and his administration. They open the concluding chapter with a disclaimer acknowledging the caveats involved in summarizing the former president.
"We know this will be one of many serious assessments of the Clinton administration," Shields said. "We are not ready to write the final word on this volatile time in American politics, nor this very complex president. We hope, however, that our interdisciplinary work encourages future scholars to reject traditional disciplinary boundaries and embrace more diverse approaches to evaluating presidents and their administrations."
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