Papers detail Clintons’ journey

FAYETTEVILLE - Bill and Hillary necking in a White House kitchen.

Hillary and best friend Diane, out for a walk, giving tourists who don’t recognize them directions to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Hillary describing the woman in her husband’s affair as a “narcissistic loony toon.” Those are among the observations and anecdotes in documents collected by the late DianeBlair, a high-profile political science professor at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville who was a close friend for more than 25 years of President Bill Clinton and potential future presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Last week, as Blair’s papers drew national attention for the first time, the collection provided an intimate glimpse into the lives of Blair and arguably the world’s most powerful political couple from the mid-1970s to 2000.

After her death, Jim Blair donated the collection of papers to the university where his wife had been a popular teacher. The collection is in 109 boxes and consists of more than 200,000 pages. Sixteen boxes, some 32,000 pages, are devoted to the Clintons.

The files cover everything from political science lectures, women’s rights and public broadcasting to William Jefferson Clinton’s evolution from a UA law school professor to the nation’s commander in chief.

They also portray Hillary Clinton’s life before she became a New York U.S. senator and President Barack Obama’s secretary of state.

Frequently in the papers, the Clintons are referred to by their initials - BC and HRC - or by acronyms: POTUS (president of the United States) and FLOTUS (first lady of the United States). Occasionally, there’s a typo or two.

The importance of the collection “cannot be overstated,” said Janine Parry, a UA political science professor who inherited much of Blair’s scholarly library. “[Blair] kept meticulous records, spectacularly detailed and voluminous both.”

“Like a good scholar, Diane wanted to be sure we had as complete an overview as possible of her experiences in politics,” said Jay Barth, a distinguished professor of political science at Hendrix College in Conway and a longtime Blair family friend.

The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news website that describes itself as “uncovering the stories that the professional left hopes will never see the light of day,” first reported a week ago on what it headlined “The Hillary Papers.” National and state news organizations have since featured portions of the Blair collection, especially matters related to Bill Clinton’s relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, the Whitewater Development Corp. and the Clintons’ failed attempt to pass national health-care legislation during Bill Clinton’s presidency.

The Clintons could not be reached last week for comment.

Jim Blair, a retired Fayetteville attorney, expressed surprise that his late wife’s papers have received so much attention four years after the collection was opened to the public. Yes, Hillary Clinton is thought to be pondering a bid for the White House in 2016. But it has been more than a dozen years since Bill Clinton completed his two terms in the White House and much of what’s in the papers, according to Blair, has been reported or known already.

“I think it’s all old news,” he said. “Those records have been open since 2010. She’s been dead since 2000. Everything that’s there has been known for a long time. … To me there’s nothing new there. There’s nothing newsworthy there.”

A ‘SUSTAINING FRIENDSHIP’

The Blairs’ relationship with the Clintons dates to when the Clintons taught at the university’s law school. Hillary Clinton and Diane Blair were both transplants to Arkansas and, along with another friend, Ann Rainwater Henry, were among the few women on the university’s faculty. After becoming Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton presided over Diane Blair’s marriage to Jim Blair in 1979.

Notes like one written by Hillary Clinton soon after the administration’s 1994 losing effort to pass health-care changes illustrate the affection between the two couples: “Dear Jim and Diane: During Thanksgiving especially, but really every single day, I am grateful for you both and for our sustaining friendship over the years. One of the best gifts I’ve ever received was the love you’ve given me - through good times and … recently … Love, H”

The collection also illustrates human joys and trials.

In late 1998, when her husband was facing House impeachment proceedings, Hillary Clinton had acute back problems, a dislocated sacroiliac “caused or precipitated by wearing high heels,” Blair wrote.

“She tried to keep it quiet,” Blair noted. But then speculation began that Hillary Clinton was “hiding out,” was in “psychic pain.”

At another point, Hillary Clinton told Blair that the first family went to church, a Chinese restaurant and a Shakespeare play, and was “greeted everywhere with wild applause and cheers.”

“This, she said, is what drives their adversaries totally nuts, that they don’t bend, do not appear to be suffering,” wrote Blair.

The prism through which Diane Blair viewed the Clintons went beyond the personal. As a political scientist, she already had written an authoritative book on the state’s politics, Arkansas Politics and Government: Do the People Rule?, initially published in 1988.

She also was active in politics, most notably debating the Equal Rights Amendment with conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly in the Arkansas General Assembly on Valentine’s Day 1975. In her memoir, Living History, Hillary Clinton recalls helping Diane Blair prepare for the “confrontation,” which she said Blair won “hands down.”

Among the documents in the collection is a note Diane Blair wrote to a friend who was attending the Republican National Convention in 1992 in Houston as a Democratic Party observer. Blair closed the note: “Hope you gave my love to Phyllis Schlafly.”

“Diane was an incredibly dynamic person who took her love of understanding politics and became pretty infectious as a teacher and a writer about politics,” Barth said. Barth co-wrote with her the second edition of Arkansas Politics and Government, a project that began in the final months of Blair’s life.

Much of Blair’s documents relating to Clinton came from her role as a senior researcher on Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, when she worked under Clinton’s former gubernatorial Chief of Staff Betsey Wright, focusing primarily on correcting what the campaign saw as media misrepresentations of Clinton’s record in Arkansas. The “rapid response team” that Wright headed also dealt with Clinton’s personal scandals.

THE SCANDAL FILE

After the 1992 election, Blair remained in Arkansas, but she continued to monitor Clinton controversies.

A file in the collection called “Bill Clinton Scandals, General Material, 1995” had a red ribbon tied around a bundle of about 100 pieces of paper, mostly copies of articles about the Whitewater land deal in Arkansas, a transaction that eventually spawned a long-running investigation by an independent counsel.

One of the scandals early in the Clinton presidency involved Jim Blair and cattle futures. The New York Times had reported that Jim Blair - who was at one time outside legal counsel for Tyson Foods Inc. - had helped Hillary Clinton collect a $100,000 windfall on the commodities market. The investments began shortly before Bill Clinton’s 1978 election as governor. Tyson subsequently received $9 million in state loans, the newspaper reported in 1994. Jim Blair and the Clintons denied any conflict of interest.

From Fayetteville, Diane Blair remained in contact with some of the Friends of Bill who had helped engineer Bill Clinton’s successful presidential bid.

The strain of the long hours over many months during the campaign frayed Blair’s relationship with Wright immediately after the race, but their friendship endured, according to emails in the late 1990s. Wright, the former deputy campaign manager, wasn’t given a White House post after Bill Clinton’s election. While commenting to Diane Blair on movies such as Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Wright blamed her association with the Clintons for her inability - later in the decade - to obtain work.

“Having worked for the Clintons is such a liability in pinning down new sources of income,” Wright wrote in an April 30, 1999, email to Blair. “I’ll bet I couldn’t even get a job as a cashier at Wal-Mart because they would be worried about [what] I would say to customers.”

She wrote a particularly emotional email to Blair in August 1998, a couple of days after the president went on national television to apologize for having an inappropriate relationship with Lewinsky. Wright said the problem grew out of a “very serious illness he has.”

Wright, who had worked to contain Bill Clinton’s sex scandals (she called them “bimbo eruptions”) during the 1992 campaign, expressed frustration with the president’s ongoing escapades.

“My scars from bill’s behavior of this sort are old and raw; he has never been monogamous in his infidelities so i think there will be much more to come … i am wondering whether it is possible for me to ever forgive him, especially for never learning his lesson,” she wrote in an email.

Wright, who returned to Arkansas after living for a time in Washington, D.C., could not be reached for comment for this article.

‘HUSSMAN AND HIS MINIONS’

Another significant issue related to state politics that is addressed in Blair’s papers involves efforts in 1994 by influential Arkansans to lobby the Clintons to nominate then-federal judge Richard Arnold, a Texarkana native, to the U.S. Supreme Court. The nomination ultimately went to Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, a former Harvard professor serving at the time on the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Blair’s papers include a “Memo re BC’s Supreme Court appointment,” dated May 11, 1994. It details her advocacy for Arnold and her separate conversations with the Clintons on the matter.

Bill Clinton cited concerns that included political fallout, possible negative reaction to Arnold’s divorce and the judge’s health issues, Blair wrote. Arnold died of cancer 10 years later, in 2004.

Blair says that when she talked to Hillary Clinton, however, the first lady opposed Arnold’s nomination, at least in part because of Arnold’s ties to his former brother-in-law, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette publisher Walter Hussman Jr.

“(Later, when talked to HRC, she took exactly opposite take. G * * * * * * Hussman needs to know that it’s his own g * * * * * * fault; that he can’t destroy everybody from Ark. and everything about the state and then not pay the price for his precious Richard. He needs to get the message big time, that Richard might have a chance next round if Hussmann and his minions will lay off all this outrageous lies and innuendo.) They shoudl ahve their noses rubbed into it.”

Hussman, whose sister, Gale, was married to Arnold from 1958-75, says he did encourage efforts to nominate Arnold and spoke with Clinton staff members.

The publisher got a call from President Clinton late one night “and we talked, primarily about Richard and the Supreme Court,” Hussman wrote in an email response to questions last week.

“Clinton did express his anger at all the stories that his opponents or enemies in Arkansas were circulating about him. I listened to him vent about this, but I did not get the impression that he was directing that anger at me or the newspaper, but at others. I remember saying that while I know he was upset, it really didn’t have anything to do with Richard’s possible nomination, and I told him that he and I both knew Richard was the most qualified person he was considering. I told him it was his decision, but it would make Arkansas history and add a great jurist to the court if he selected Arnold. We concluded the call in a cordial way.”

Hussman expressed surprise, however, at learning that Hillary Clinton may have opposed Arnold’s nomination.

“I had never heard that,” he wrote. “And assuming she did, I don’t think she did it because our newspaper’s advocacy of Richard Arnold for the Supreme Court. I think her comments were at a time when she was angry, and some of that anger got directed at me and the newspaper.”

‘SUCCESS AT LIVING’

If Diane Blair had lived long enough to write a book about the Clintons, it would’ve been a great read, said Parry, the UA professor.

Blair’s textbook is still a key resource for Arkansas political science students, she said.

“Not all scholars also are accomplished storytellers. Diane was. Her’s is one of those rare books students don’t sell back to the bookstore at semester’s end. They keep it and put it on their coffee tables,” Parry said.

After Blair was diagnosed with cancer in early 2000, news accounts show that the Clintons visited her in Fayetteville several times.

Blair wrote that she particularly was cheered by an April 2000 visit during which Hillary Clinton planted tulips in the Blairs’ Fayetteville yard.

The Clintons again returned to Fayetteville in late July that year for Blair’s memorial service at the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville.

Among the speakers were both Clintons, retired Sens. David Pryor and Dale Bumpers, former students, fellow book club members, relatives, academic leaders, a rabbi and a pastor, according to news accounts at the time.

“I don’t know anyone who tried harder and had more success at living,” said Hillary Clinton, who presided over the 2½-hour gathering. “I’ve had many tough times, professional and personal, that I could not have gotten through without her.”