A Simple Christmas (22 page)

12.

Rewards

July 15, 1996, was like Christmas in July in a very real way. On that day, I was sworn in as the forty-fourth governor of Arkansas after having served as lieutenant governor for three years. I had been elected to serve under the Democrat governor Jim Guy Tucker in 1993 and reelected in 1994 for a four-year term that I didn't get to finish. In late May, Governor Tucker had been convicted of felonies related to the Whitewater scandal and had agreed to step down from his office on July 15. Just minutes before I was supposed to be sworn in, Tucker called me to say he had changed his mind and did not plan to step down after all. This was after seven weeks of transition during which I had prepared to assume the governorship and the state had scrambled to facilitate the changeover. To top it off, the Capitol was overflowing with people who had poured in from around the state to watch the swearing in of the new Republican governor. All hell broke loose. For almost five tumultuous hours, there were two men—one Democrat and one Republican—claiming to be governor. To make matters worse, the state police and the National Guard were rendered useless because they weren't sure who their boss was. The Democrats controlled the House 89-11 and the Senate 31-4, and yet even they realized that Tucker's actions could sink their party, as the anger and outrage that had started in the Capitol had begun to spread throughout the entire state. Tucker finally relented, resigned unconditionally, and I was sworn in at 7:00 P.M.

As much as I lament the fact that I didn't assume power in a normal, peaceful, and celebratory way, the event was a blessing for me. First, my unlikely and sometimes awkward political journey had taken me to the governor's office, and second, the misconduct of my predecessor meant that the very Democrats who dominated the state were willing to give me—the third Republican governor of Arkansas in more than a hundred years—a fair chance.

Of course, just as the joy and excitement of Christmas morning eventually give way to the challenge of cleaning up the mess you just left under the tree, my celebrations upon assuming office were short-lived. After the first few days of adulation and adoration from the good people of Arkansas, the reality of the job took hold. Being governor is hard work, and it's not a five-day-a-week, nine-to-five job. You have to be on duty 24-7 because a tornado, a prison escape, or the death of a thirteen-year-old boy being held in state custody doesn't always happen during banking hours. But even though it's demanding and challenging, being governor is absolutely the best job imaginable if you are truly interested in changing things and having an impact on society, which is exactly what I wanted to do.

And of course, despite all the hard work, being governor does have its perks, the best being the accommodations. The Governor's Mansion is unlike any other home. Living in it is like living in a very nice bed-and-breakfast where you never have to check out. You are surrounded by people twenty-four hours a day, and there's never a moment when you're completely alone. State police and security detail guard your home at all hours of the day and night. Cameras watch every inch of the property within the gates. If you leave your bedroom in the middle of the night, you always have to make sure you're dressed because there's always a chance you will bump into someone—even at 3:00 A.M.—whether it's a staffer or a group of several hundred people attending an event. But despite the lack of privacy there, the governor's mansion offers every possible convenience. The staff is charged with the task of attending to chores and errands so that the governor and his family can go about their business without the hassle of doing laundry, shopping for groceries, or ironing. I had spent my entire life worrying about money and working hard just to get by. I'd even had to sell my prized guitars just to buy a washer and dryer. Never in my life had I imagined that I'd ever have someone who was hired to do all of my laundry for me!

Even Christmas was an official affair. During the holiday season, the Governor's Mansion serves as the center of activity for the state and plays host to an almost nightly schedule of events, parties, and tours from Thanksgiving until New Year's Day. It's difficult to separate a private “family Christmas” from the public “citizens' Christmas,” and after the first year, my family and I gave up on having a separate “family tree” in the upstairs area where the bedrooms were and instead used one of the several trees that adorned the public spaces downstairs.

Since the earliest days of our marriage, Janet had collected manger scenes that she used to decorate the house. Her favorite was a very large one made of olive wood that we had purchased on one of our many trips to Israel, and during Christmas in the Governor's Mansion, we placed this on a large table in the conference room. She made it her tradition in the mansion to display all of these manger scenes each year. She considered it her way to add a personal touch on the otherwise “official” Christmas decorating process.

Every year, a wonderful group of women volunteers from around the state came to help decorate. They gave several days of their time and much of their care and love to helping make the Governor's Mansion a special and beautiful place at Christmas. No matter how many times I saw the tastefully and carefully planned decorations, I was still in awe of their simple yet stunning beauty.

My entire life, I had searched for the perfect home—first as a newlywed, then as a new father—but during my time as governor, I realized that home is about more than just four walls and a roof. It's about family. Even though I was living in the Governor's Mansion, it was never
my
house. I didn't own it, and I knew that one day I would be forced to move out. I spent a decade sitting on furniture I didn't own, dining off dishes that weren't mine, and eating food I hadn't purchased or cooked. But my wife and three kids made it feel like home, especially at Christmas.

My family spent more years and celebrated more Christmases in the Governor's Mansion than in any other residence we'd lived in for thirty-five years. Each year was special and marked by a beauty and comfort we hadn't experienced before. That ended with my last Christmas as governor.

My ten-and-a-half-year term came to an end in January 2007, and so the Christmas of 2006—complete with the traditional staff, cabinet, and state agency holiday events—was much more nostalgic and emotional than any before. The pace and pressure of my term had certainly taken its toll on my team, and photos from the last few months of my term reveal just how much we had weathered. We all certainly felt a genuine mood of satisfaction and fulfillment for all we had accomplished over the past decade, but the sense of finality was marked by deep sadness among our staff.

While my family, my staff, and I tried to soak in each moment and savor the memories, we were also faced with a looming deadline to vacate the capitol and the Governor's Mansion. We had determined back in 1996, at the very beginning of my term, that we would do everything we could to make sure this transition was as smooth as possible. I had assumed office in the midst of chaos and confusion, and I had promised myself that I wouldn't force my successor to deal with the same thing.

When I walked into my office on my first night as governor, I was shocked and appalled by the mess waiting for me. The previous administration had left no files, records, or even phone books behind, and the only thing that remained was a half-full drawer of papers for our legal counsel. There were no records of appointments, no budgetary records for any state office, and not even instructions on how to use the phones. We were able to get records of appointments from the secretary of state and budget information from the finance and administration department, but for everything else we had to start from scratch. It was a petty thing to do, and it meant that I had to spend a good chunk of my early days in office just trying to get organized, when I should've been running the state. I wouldn't let the next guy suffer through that.

But despite my attempts to facilitate a smooth handover, certain journalists and opponents began to accuse me of destroying hard drives and office computers. In fact, I
did
have the hard drives from several of the computers removed and destroyed, but only
after
my staff and I had salvaged all records of transactions, budgets, appointments, and important correspondence that my successor might need. The procedure we followed was not only authorized and recommended by our department of information services but based on federal guidelines for information protection. In many cases, state-owned computers were sold to outside parties, and if files weren't sufficiently scrubbed, hackers could obtain sensitive information—even medical records and Social Security numbers—that, if dropped in the wrong hands, could lead to privacy violations or lawsuits against the state. We made sure all pertinent records and information got passed to the new administration and even placed funds in our budget to help cover costs of the transition and vacated our offices earlier than required so the new guys could come in without a hiccup.

We did the same at the Governor's Mansion. Janet and I moved out two weeks early so as to give the new first family the opportunity to arrange the house to their liking before they moved in. Yet despite the herculean effort we put forth to make things easier, my staff and I were rewarded with a series of shoddily researched news articles and columns and even ethics complaints, all of which were baseless. So the peaceful, relaxing and reflective final Christmas we had hoped to spend in the Governor's Mansion was quite the opposite. And on top of the political drama, I still had to contend with some issues at home.

Janet had been experiencing pain in both of her knees for some time. The trouble was caused by a combination of old basketball injuries and the residual effects of her cancer surgery, which had led to neuropathy in her legs. Her doctor told her that her left knee needed to be replaced immediately and she would need to replace the right knee before too long, so Janet decided to have both operations at the same time—two days before Thanksgiving, just in time for the annual Christmas events and our preparations to move.

Having one knee replaced is tough, but getting both replaced on the same day is pretty much unbearable. If you ever find out that someone has given me double knee surgery, call the authorities and report medical malpractice because I assure you that I would never elect to have that done.

Janet was virtually incapacitated for the entire holiday season and during our move to a home we had purchased in North Little Rock, so I was pretty much left to do the packing on my own. We had accumulated a substantial amount of stuff over our thirty-two years of marriage, and much of what we had brought to the Governor's Mansion more than ten years earlier was still in unopened boxes. The way I looked at it, if we had lived without it for ten years, then we could live without it forever. I voted to get rid of those boxes without even opening them, but Janet had a different idea. I'm sure you know she won, and we ended up going through each and every box and taking most of them with us. Most of those are now in storage in our new home.

As we went through our stuff, we put things into four categories: throw away, give away, store away, or move away. I donated all of my official papers and memorabilia to my alma mater, Ouachita Baptist University, as I had agreed to do, but I gave away a large number of keepsakes from my tenure and various mementos that had accumulated through the years. (Most of these things—like photos of special events—went to my staff.) I decided, after much hesitation, to dispose of my rather extensive theological library, which I had started in high school and had grown to include several thousand books. I donated the entire library to the Chaplain's Ministry at the Arkansas Department of Corrections in the hope they might inspire some inmates to turn their lives around.

Everything else—besides the truckloads (literally) of stuff we threw away—came with us. In the weeks leading up to the move, I woke up almost every morning between 4:00 and 5:00 A.M. to take a Suburban full of boxes, which I had packed late the night before, over to our new house before returning to my office for a long day of more transitional work.

Oh, and in the middle of all this I was also in the process of trying to determine whether I was going to run for president of the United States, and I had a new book called
From Hope to Higher Ground
coming out the week I left office. Just a few things to keep me busy and occupied!

So just how simple was my Christmas? I had to take care of a wife rendered a complete invalid; tidy up after ten years as governor; move out of the Governor's Mansion and into a new home; launch a new book; and decide whether to run for president. Oh, and I still had to deal with all of the normal Christmas stuff—shopping, decorating, etc.—and the parade of state-run events. I was sure looking for some “peace on earth, goodwill toward men”!