First In His Class (105 page)

Governor Clinton meeting with Brigadier General James (Bulldog) Drummond (right) at Fort Chaffee after the Cuban refugee riot. Clinton was given high marks for his performance under pressure, hut his close friendship with President Carter became increasingly strained and was then held against him by Arkansas voters.

The governor at the Hope Watermelon Festival. Since his college days, Clinton had been at ease sticking out his oversize right hand and working conversations back to his humble roots—and the giant watermelons of Hope.

With Clinton in the governor's office, Hillary Rodham seemed to have little difficulty embracing the acquisitive and competitive corporate life she had once repudiated. Her decision to join the Rose Law Firm, which represented, among others, the holy trinity of Arkansas business and industry—Stephens Inc., Tyson Foods, and Wal-Mart—later provoked questions of conflict of interest.

Vincent Foster, Jr. (below), and Webster Hubbell (right) were Hillary's partners at the Rose Law Firm and business associates. They would both join President Clinton's administration in high positions.

The 1988 Democratic Convention in Atlanta was the third consecutive convention at which Clinton had made the coveted list of speakers. After the first sentence, the speech went downhill. After a few minutes, Clinton could see that he had lost the audience. At the twenty-one-minute mark, ABC cut away and people could he heard shouting, “Get the hook!”

By the time Clinton began his campaign for a fifth term, he was such a large, familiar figure in the state that he faced the ultimate political paradox. His self-image had always been one of action and change, yet now he had come to represent permanence and the status quo.

Clinton and Al Gore at the national meeting of the Democratic Leadership Council in May 1991. The buzz among journalists and political opinion makers was that Clinton's keynote speech established him as a serious national figure who seemed to have a clear idea of what he wanted to do as president.

On October 3, 1991, with his wife, Hillary, and their daughter, Chelsea, at his side, and with many of the key figures in his life—including his mother, Virginia Kelley, and friends Carolyn Staley, David Leopoulos, Tommy Caplan, and Bob Reich—in attendance, Clinton announced his candidacy for president.