Over the course of my winning campaigns for...
Over the course of my winning campaigns for governor, I got more and more support from Independent and Republican voters in the cities and suburbs, but I never recovered the depth of support I had enjoyed among white rural voters in the Third District and much of the rest of the stateNow, on top of all the things I couldnt help, I had shot myself in the foot with the car-tag increase, blowing five years of hard work among rural Arkansansand a lot of blue-collar city people, toowith the stroke of a pen

The pattern of good policy and bad politics wasnt confined to legislative mattersI organized the governors office without a chief of staff, giving different areas of responsibility to Rudy Moore, Steve Smith, and John Danner, a policy analyst from California whose wife, Nancy Pietrafesa, was on old friend of HillarysNancy was working in the administration, too, on educationPresident Kennedy had organized his White House in a similar way, but his guys all had short hair, boring suits, white shirts, and dark, narrow tiesRudy, Steve, and John all had beards and were less constrained in their dress codeMy conservative critics in the legislature had a field day with themEventually, several inter-office conflicts broke outI decided to make Rudy chief of staff, have Steve oversee a lot of the policy initiatives, prada bag with metal handle and release John Danner and his wife, Nancy, from their responsibilitiesWith an inexcusable loss of nerve, I asked Rudy to tell themHe did it and they quitAlthough I tried to talk to them about it later, our relationship never recoveredI doubt that they ever forgave me for not handling it myself, and I dont blame themThey were good people who worked hard and had good ideas; through inexperience, I had put them in an impossible situation

I also got into hot water for bringing in a lot of people from out of state to run the Department of Health, the Department of Human Services and its divisions of Social Services and Mental Health, the Department of Education, and the new Department of EnergyThey were able and well intentioned, but they needed more contacts and experience dealing with their constituencies to make the big changes we were seeking

These problems were aggravated by my own lack of experience and my youthI looked even younger than my thirty-two yearsWhen I became attorney general, George Fisher, the talented cartoonist for the Arkansas Gazette, drew me in a baby carriageWhen I became governor he promoted me to a tricycleIt wasnt until I became President that he took me off the tricycle and put me in a pickup truckAnd he was a supporterIt should have set off an alarm bell, but it didnt

After chanel body jewelry a nationwide search, DrRobert Young, who had run a successful rural health clinic in West Virginia, was appointed director of the Department of HealthI wanted him to deal with the serious problems of health-care access and quality in Arkansas rural areasYoung and Orson Berry, director of the Rural Health Office, came up with an innovative plan to establish clinics that required a doctor to be in attendance at least once every two weeks, with nurse practitioners and physicians assistants manning them full-time and providing the diagnostic services and treatment for which they were trainedDespite the insufficient number of doctors willing to practice in rural areas, studies showed that most patients preferred a nurse practitioner or physicians assistant because they spent more time with patients; and a nurse-midwife program in Mississippi County had cut the infant mortality rate there in half

Arkansas doctors strongly opposed the planJim Webber, representing the family physicians, said, We dont believe a little bit of care is better than nothingNotwithstanding the doctors opposition, the Carter administration approved a grant funding our planWe opened four rural clinics, started building three others, and expanded the Mississippi County Nurse Midwife Program with nurse practitionersAnd the work we did won black and white chanel praise across the nation

We tried to work with the physicians whenever we couldI supported appropriations to build an intensive-care nursery at the Arkansas Childrens Hospital to care for extremely premature and other endangered newborns, and to establish a radiation-therapy institute at the University Medical Center to provide better treatment to cancer patientsI appointed Hillary to chair a Rural Health Advisory Committee, to recommend further improvements and help prioritize the large number of requests for help from rural communitiesWe worked harder to recruit doctors to rural areas, set up a loan fund to provide up to $150,000 of state money to any doctor who would set up a clinic in a town with six thousand or fewer people, and allowed family practitioners in small towns to apply for $6,000 a year in income supplementsThe doctors strongly supported all these initiatives, which were especially remarkable because the economic downturn in 1980 forced severe cutbacks in the Department of Healths budgetStill, the doctors never forgave DrYoung, or me, for not consulting them more and not going more slowly on the rural health clinicsBy August 1980, the Arkansas Medical Society was asking for his resignationWhen I left office in 1981, some of my initiatives were cut back, illustrating the point that you fendi handbag replicas can have good policy without good politics, but you cant give people good government without both

Energy was a huge issue because of OPECs steep increases in the price of oil, which raised prices for everything else, tooIn this area, we had good policy and better politics, though I still made some powerful enemiesI got the legislature to upgrade the Arkansas Energy Office to a cabinet-level department and attempted to build a broad coalition of ratepayers, utilities, businesses, and government to save ratepayers money; give utilities, businesses, and homeowners incentives to promote conservation; and help develop new sources of clean energyI thought we could become more self-sufficient and a national leader in both conservation and alternative fuelsWe passed legislation allowing tax deductions for energy conservation and renewable energy expenditures for residential, commercial, and industrial use, and exempted mixed fuels that were at least 10 percent alcohol from the state gas taxWe provided energy audits to industrial and commercial businesses and gave 50 percent matching grants to schools, hospitals, and other public institutions for the purchase and installation of energy conservation programsThe federal government provided funds for such initiatives, and we were the first state in the country to get dolce and gabbana