Interesting to watch Bill ‘do his thing’

Jim Fall

Anyone who knows me knows that I am an ol’ Arkansas boy who was fortunate —or unfortunate, however you choose to look at it —to be just cutting my teeth in this newspaper business in my hometown at the same time another homegrown guy was beginning to make a name for himself.

James Randolph Fall has a few years on William Jefferson Clinton, but we are close enough in age and career paths that we went down many of the same roads.

Sometimes, I was ahead of him, but more often than not, I was playing the reporter’s role and chronicling his advancements.

Our paths crossed several times, especially when I was at the El Dorado News-Times in south Arkansas, and Clinton was the state’s young attorney general, and then governor.

After he was re-elected governor in 1983, following his having been defeated after his initial 1979-81 term, our state representative, a feisty fellow named Jody Mahoney, handled a good portion of the Clintons’ education reform legislation at the State House.

Because of that connection, the governor made more than a proportionate share of visits to El Dorado, coming for most special occasions, and, as he has demonstrated so many times since — love him or hate him — he proved time and again he is a masterful orator.

Orator may be too much of a sophisticated term for Bill Clinton, because his patented style is anything but lofty, but it is always effective.

And, as demonstrated by his “talk” to the Democrat’s national convention Tuesday night following Hillary Rodham Clinton’s nomination for president — in itself an unprecedented accomplishment — he may have lost a bit of his fire and brimstone demeanor, but he can still get his point across.

Interestingly enough, as he chronicled his meeting, courtship, and eventual married life with Hillary Clinton — artfully detailing many of her long list of accomplishments in his purposely unassuming way — it was Hillary Rodham who played a pretty large role in his being ousted from the governor’s office in 1980.

You see, back then, she was still Hillary Rodham, and that did not sit well with many Arkansas voters in those days. For the record, a steep increase in truck tag rates didn’t help anything either.

I was sitting next to then-Governor Clinton once when he delivered a 100-percent correct demographic/economic development speech — without a note.

I heard his 1988 Democrat convention speech, the “poor” one critics assailed as having gone on and on, and I heard subsequent acceptance, inaugural and State of the Union addresses that have few equals. (I did not memorize any of them, however, as Clinton did Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.)

Call him governor, Mr. President, or Slick Willy, whatever your conscience dictates, but no one can deny the man has a way with words.

He can captivate an audience, as he did Tuesday night, in a manner that reflects his own rise from Boys Nation delegate, where he was forever moved by having met President John F. Kennedy, to becoming the 42nd President of the United States.

“In the spring of 1971, I met a girl …,” he began his litany of the changes he credited her with having wrought.

Whether his personal endorsement will be enough to vault Hillary Clinton into the White House or not is far, far from being settled, but for my money, Bill Clinton did all he could do to put her in the proper perspective.

A tough task, considering the bad press Hillary Clinton has received, and will most certainly continue to receive until November, and beyond, but one that Bill Clinton proved, once again, that he was up to.

I am a biased Bill Clinton fan, although I never qualified as a Friend of Bill.

There is just something about the guy that is mesmerizing, especially when he begins telling the stories he loves to tell, talking to those in an audience.

Agree with his politics, or not, whether you voted for him, or plan to vote for his wife, or not , is really beside the point of this conversation.

This is a personally honest opinion of Bill Clinton as a public speaker, an equal to the Great Communicator, as Ronald Reagan is so affectionately remembered, as a master at that particular phase of his craft.

But then again, that’s just one Arkansas boy talking about another one.

And I’m with him.