In 1982, with Chelsea on my hip or holding my hand, I walked up and down streets meeting voters. I remember meeting some young mothers in the small town of Bald Knob. When I said I bet they were having a good time talking to their babies, one of them asked, “Why would I talk to her? She can’t talk back.” I knew from my Yale Child Study days―and from my mother―how important it was to talk and read to babies to build their vocabularies. Yet when I tried to explain this, the women were polite but dubious.

  After Bill’s election in 1982, a humbler, more seasoned Governor returned to the State House, though no less determined to get as much done as possible in two years.

  And there was so much to be done. Arkansas was a poor state, last or close to last by many measures, from percentage of college graduates to per capita personal income. I had helped Bill tackle health care reform in his first term, successfully setting up a network of health clinics, recruiting more doctors, nurses and midwives into rural areas―

  over the opposition of the state’s medical society. When Governor White tried to make good on his 198o campaign promise to dismantle the network, people flooded into the Capitol to protest, and White had to retreat. Bill and I agreed that Arkansas would never prosper without an overhaul of its education system. Bill announced that he was forming an Education Standards Committee to recommend sweeping educational reforms, and he wanted me to be its Chair.

  I had chaired the Rural Health Committee, and Bill asked me to tackle education because he wanted to send a signal about how serious he was. Nobody, including me, thought it was a good idea. But Bill wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Look on the bright side,” he said. “If you’re successful, our friends will complain that you could have done even more. And our enemies will complain that you did too much. If you accomplish nothing, our friends will say, ‘She should never have tried this.’ And our enemies will say, ‘See, she couldn’t get anything done!’ “ Bill was convinced he was right to appoint me, and eventually I relented.

  Again, this was a politically risky move. Improving the schools would require an increase in taxes-never a popular idea. The fifteen-member committee also recommended that students be subjected to standardized tests, including one before they could graduate from eighth grade. But the cornerstone of the proposed reform plan was mandatory teacher testing. Though this enraged the teachers union, civil rights groups and others who were vital to the Democratic Party in Arkansas, we felt there was no way around the issue. How could we expect children to perform at national levels when their teachers sometimes fell short? The debate was so bitter that one school librarian said I was “lower than a snake’s belly.” I tried to remember that I was being called names not because of who I was but what I represented.

  Getting the legislature to approve and fund the reform package turned into a knockdown-drag-out fight among interest groups. Teachers worried about their jobs. Legislators representing rural areas fretted that the plan would consolidate their small school districts.

  In the midst of this contention, I stepped before a joint session of the Arkansas legislature’s House and Senate to plead our case for improving all schools, big and small.

  For whatever reason―probably a combination of skill and lots of practice―public speaking has always been one of my strong suits. I laughed when Representative Lloyd George, a legislator from rural Yell County, later announced to the assembly: “Well, fellas, it looks like we might have elected the wrong Clinton!” It was another example of a phenomenon I call “the talking dog syndrome.” Some people are still amazed that any woman (this includes Governors’ wives, corporate CEOs, sports stars and rock singers) can hold her own under pressure and be articulate and knowledgeable. The dog can talk! In fact, it’s often an advantage if people you hope to persuade underestimate you at first. I would have been willing to bark my whole speech in order to guarantee education reform!

  We won some votes and lost some, and we had to fight the teachers union in court.

  But by the end of Bill’s term in office, Arkansas had a plan in place to raise school standards, tens of thousands of children had a better chance to realize their learning potentials and teachers got a desperately needed raise in pay. I was particularly pleased when Terrel Bell, President Reagan’s Secretary of Education, praised the Arkansas reform plan, commenting that Bill had been “a prime leader in education.”

  The public success of education reform legislation was followed by a devastating personal challenge. In July 1989, I received a call in the middle of the week from Betsey Wright, who had become Bill’s Chief of Staff in 1983 after his reelection. She told me Bill was on his way to see me. I had just finished lunch with some friends, so I excused myself and stood outside the restaurant until Bill pulled up. We sat in the car while he told me that the head of the state police had just informed him that his brother, Roger, was under police surveillance. The police had videotaped him selling drugs to an informer.

  The state police director then told Bill they could arrest Roger right then or continue to run up the charges and increase the pressure on him to identify his supplier, the real target. Roger was selling, he said, to finance a serious cocaine habit. The director then asked Bill what he wanted him to do. Bill replied there was no choice. The operation against Roger had to run its course. As a big brother, however, it was excruciatingly painful to know that, at best, his brother would be going to jail and, at worst, he might kill himself with drug abuse.

  Bill and I berated ourselves for not seeing signs of Roger’s abuse and taking some kind of action to help him. We worried that this news, and Bill’s knowledge beforehand, would deeply hurt his mother. Finally, the wait was over. Roger was arrested and charged with possessing and selling cocaine. Bill explained to both Roger and Virginia that he had learned about the investigation but felt duty-bound not to tell his mother or warn his brother. Virginia was shocked by the accusations and the realization that Bill and I had known that Roger was headed for prison. Although I understood their pain and anger, I believed Bill had taken the only course open to him by keeping the information from his family. Roger agreed to counseling before he left to serve his prison sentence. In the course of those sessions, Roger admitted how much he hated his father, and Virginia and Bill learned for the first time how profoundly Roger had been affected by his father’s alcoholism and violence. Bill realized that living with alcoholism and the denial and secrecy that it spawned had also created consequences and problems for him that would take years to son out. This was one of many family crises we would face. Even strong marriages can be strained when trouble comes. In the years ahead we would have rough patches, but we were determined to get through them.

  Starting in 1987, more than a few Democratic Party leaders were urging Bill to consider a run for the Presidency in 1988 when Ronald Reagan’s second term would end.

  Both Bill and I hoped Senator Dale Bumpers would decide to run, and we thought he would. He had been a first-rate Governor and Senator and could have been a formidable national candidate. In late March, though, he decided not to run. The interest in Bill increased, and he asked me what I thought. I did not think he should run and told him so. It looked as if Vice President Bush would be nominated as the successor to President Reagan, running for Reagan’s surrogate third term. I thought that Bush would be hard to beat. But there were other reasons, too. Bill had been elected in 1986 to a fourth term as Governor and the first four-year term since Reconstruction. He had not yet served as Chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council and had just begun his chairmanship of the National Governors Association. He was only forty years old. His mother was dealing with problems in her nursing practice, and his brother was readjusting to life after prison.

  If that weren’t enough, my father had just suffered a stroke and my parents were moving to Little Rock so that Bill and I could help them out. I thought it was the wrong time in our lives and told him I just was not convinced.

  One day he thought he would run, the next day, he was ready to say he would not. Finally, I persuaded him to set a date by which he would make a decision. Anyone who knows Bill understands he has to have a deadline or he will continue to explore every possible pro and con. He picked July 14 and reserved a room in a hotel to make his announcement―

  whatever it might be. A number of his friends from around the country came down to be with him the day before. Some were pushing him to run; others thought it was premature and he should wait. Bill analyzed every point anyone raised. I thought it was significant that he was still debating less than twentyfour hours before he had to comment publicly. That meant to me that he was leaning against running but not quite ready to slam the door.

  Much has been written about the reasons for his decision not to run, but it finally came down to one word: Chelsea. Carl Wagner, a longtime Democratic activist and father of an only daughter, told Bill he would effectively be turning his daughter into an orphan. Mickey Kantor delivered the same message while he and Bill sat on the back porch of the Governor’s Mansion. Chelsea came out and asked Bill about our upcoming vacation plans. When Bill said he might not have one if he ran for President, Chelsea looked at him and said, “Then Mom and I will go without you.” That sealed the decision for Bill.

  Chelsea was beginning to understand what it meant to have a father in the public eye.

  When she was little and Bill was Governor, she had no idea what he did. Once when she was about four and someone asked her, she replied, “My daddy talks on the telephone, drinks coffee and makes ‘peeches.”

  The 1986 Governor’s campaign was the first one she had been old enough to follow.

  She could read and watch the news and be exposed to some of the meanspiritedness that politics seems to generate. One of Bill’s opponents was Orval Faubus, the infamous former Governor who defied court orders to integrate Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957. President Eisenhower sent troops to enforce the law. Because of my concerns about what Faubus and his supporters would say and do, Bill and I tried to prepare Chelsea for what she might hear about her father or, for that matter, about her mother. We sat around our dinner table in the Governor’s Mansion role-playing with her, pretending we were in debates where one of us acted like a political opponent who criticized Bill for not being a good Governor. Chelsea’s eyes grew big at the idea that anyone would say such bad things about her daddy.

  I loved Chelsea’s growing assertiveness, though it wasn’t always convenient. Around Christmas, 1988, I went duck hunting with Dr. Frank Kumpuris, a distinguished surgeon and good friend of mine, who invited me to join him, his two doctor sons, Drew and Dean, and a few other buddies at their hunting cabin. I hadn’t shot much since my days at Lake Winola with my dad, but I thought it would be fun. That’s how I found myself standing hip deep in freezing water, waiting for dawn in eastern Arkansas. When the sun rose, the ducks flew overhead and I made a lucky shot, hitting a banded duck. When I got home, Chelsea was waiting for me, outraged to wake up and learn that I had left home before dawn to go “kill some poor little duck’s mommy or daddy.” My efforts at explaining were futile. She didn’t speak to me for a whole day.

  Although Bill decided not to run in 1988, the nominee, Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts, asked him to give the nominating speech at the Democratic Convention in Atlanta. It turned into a fiasco. Dukakis and his staff had reviewed and approved every word of Bill’s text ahead of time, but the speech was longer than the delegates or the television networks expected. Some delegates on the floor began yelling at Bill to finish.

  This was a humiliating introduction to the nation, and many observers assumed Bill’s political future was over. Eight days later, though, he was on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Sbow, making fun of himself and playing his saxophone. Yet another comeback.

  After Bill was reelected Governor in 1990, Democrats across the country approached him once again about running for President. That encouragement reflected the assessment that George H. W Bush was out of touch with most Americans. Although Bush’s popularity remained astronomical in the aftermath of the Gulf War, I thought his performance on domestic issues―particularly the economy―made him vulnerable. I had realized how unfamiliar President Bush was with many of the problems facing America when I spoke with him at an Education Summit he had convened of all the Governors in Charlottesville, Virginia, in September 1989. As the wife of the Democratic co-chair of the Summit for the National Governors Association, I was seated next to President Bush at a grand dinner held at Monticello. We enjoyed a cordial relationship and had been around each other many times at the White House or the annual Governors meetings. We talked about the American health care system. I said we had the best system in the world if you wanted a heart transplant but not if you wanted a baby to survive his or her first birthday.

  Our rate of infant mortality at that time placed us behind eighteen other industrialized nations, including Japan, Canada and France. President Bush was incredulous and said, “You can’t be right about that.”

  I told him, “I’ll get you the statistics to prove it.”

  He replied, “I’ll get my own.”

  The next day, during a meeting with the Governors, he slipped Bill a note: “Tell Hillary she was right.”

  This time I believed Bill should carefully consider whether to run. In June of 1991, he attended the annual Bilderberg Conference in Europe, which brought together leaders from all over the world. After listening to Bush Administration officials defend their policies, he called to tell me how frustrated he was with their prescriptions for economic growth and nearly everything else. “This is crazy,” he said. “We’re not doing anything to get the country ready for the future.” I could tell as much from the tone of his voice as his words that he was seriously thinking through the arguments he would make if he decided to run. He had enhanced his national standing through his work in the National Governors Association, and his record in Arkansas on education, welfare reform and economic development was considered a success. When we attended the annual Governors Conference in Seattle in August, I was not surprised that a number of his Democratic colleagues told him they would support him if he was serious about running.

  After the conference, Bill, Chelsea and Itook a short vacation to Victoria and Vancouver, Canada, to talk over what he should do. Chelsea, now eleven, was significantly more mature than she had been four years earlier and ready to offer her opinions. She and I agreed: Bill could be a good President. Luckily, the primary campaign would be shorter and more focused than usual because Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa was running, which meant Bill could bypass the Iowa caucus and go straight to New Hampshire. He already had spent time there setting up a DLC chapter, and he thought he could compete against Senator Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts for the “new Democrat” vote. As Bill discussed the pros and cons with us, he assured Chelsea that his schedule would include all of her important dates, like the annual Arkansas Ballet performance of The Nutcracker, and that we would still go to Renaissance Weekend over New Year’s like we always did. I could not have predicted all that would happen, but I believed Bill was prepared on the substance of what needed to be done for the country and how to run a winning political campaign.

  We figured: What did we have to lose? Even if Bill’s run failed, he would have the satisfaction of knowing he had tried, not just to win, but to make a difference for America.

  That seemed to be a risk worth taking.

  CAMPAIGN ODYSSEY

  I got a hint of what it took to survive a presidential campaign in September 1991, when I bumped into Hal Bruno in a hallway of the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. Bruno, a veteran television producer and a casual acquaintance, was in town to check out potential presidential candidates during the fall meeting of the Democratic National Committee.

  He asked me how it was going.

  I must have looked bewildered. “I don’t know. This is all new to me. Do you have any suggestions?”

  “Just this,” he said. “Be very careful who you trust. This is different from anything you have been through before. Other than that, try to enjoy the experience!”

  It was sage advice, though it would be impossible to run an undertaking as complex and pressured as a presidential campaign without trusting an awful lot of people. We started with the array of friends and campaign professionals we knew we could rely on.

  As soon as he decided in September to enter the race, Bill contacted a skeletal crew of advisers to help him launch his candidacy. Craig Smith, a longtime aide, left the Governor’s payroll to work on operations until a full-fledged campaign could be assembled, and he then became its Director of State Operations. On October 2, 1991, many of Bill’s advisers were in Little Rock to help him shape his announcement speech scheduled for the following day. The scene of creative chaos in the mansion that night would be typical of the entire campaign. Stan Greenberg, the pollster, and Frank Greer, the media adviser, along with Al From, the President of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), and Bruce Reed, the DLC’s Policy Director, huddled around Bill all day and into the night, trying to get him to finish his crucial speech. Bill made phone calls, read through his previous speeches and dove into trays of food laid out on the table. Chelsea, eleven years old and a budding ballerina, jetted between rooms and pirouetted around her father and our guests until her bedtime. At four in the morning, the speech was done.

  At noon the next day, in front of the Old State House in Little Rock, a reenergized Bill Clinton stood with Chelsea and me before a bank of microphones and TV cameras and declared his intention to run for President. His speech laid out his emerging critique of the Bush Administration. “Middle-class people are spending more time on the job, less time with their children and bringing home less money to pay more for health care and housing and education. The poverty rates are up, the streets are meaner and ever more children are growing up in broken families. Our country is headed in the wrong direction, fast. It’s falling behind, it’s losing its way, and all we’ve gotten out of Washington is status quo paralysis, neglect and selfishness … not leadership and vision.”