You watch a man get sworn in as the governor of the state and you naturally think about your history with him.
Mine with Asa Hutchinson began in 1986. He was a young man. I was an even younger man.
At the time the federal prosecutor for western Arkansas, Hutchinson announced as the Republican challenger to U.S. Sen. Dale Bumpers. A fledgling columnist for the Arkansas Gazette, I sat down with him and badgered him with questions about his graduating from Bob Jones University, an ultra-right institution--and I do mean ultra-right--in South Carolina.
At the time the school still banned interracial dating. It abandoned that policy ... in 2000.
Hutchinson seemed taken aback by my impertinence. I learned over time that he always reacts that way--with a delay for processing and self-regulation.
Years later he would tell people that my questions were fair and that he simply didn't handle them well.
That was generous of him. If memory serves, my tone conveyed an indignant disapproval that anyone who attended such a school would presume to go to the U.S. Senate. I'd try a little more finesse now. A man can rise above his raising, for goodness sake.
The next thing I recall, later in '86, was that Hutchinson--with that prosecutorial style of the accomplished courtroom lawyer that he was--pretty clearly outperformed Bumpers in a televised debate.
So I wrote a column saying Asa would lose the election but could tell his grandkids someday that he out-debated the man considered the finest orator in the U.S. Senate.
I don't know if he's told his grandkids that or not.
What I remember from that debate is Hutchinson's hammering Bumpers for voting against several of Ronald Reagan's judgeship nominees. I also remember one good retort from Bumpers, who said Hutchinson seemed to be carrying in his pocket a proposed constitutional amendment for every occasion.
The day after the election and Bumpers' easy victory, I looked up and saw Hutchinson barreling across the Gazette newsroom toward my desk.
He said he just wanted to congratulate me on my victory. That was a tad petulant, but I always rather admired him for it.
He's a competitive rascal, I'll tell you that.
Next I recall something more generally known about him, which was that, in the 1990s, he could show a moderate side as the congressman from the 3rd Congressional District.
He embraced most of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform bill even as doctrinaire Republicans resisted it as impairing one of their partisan advantages. And he came out against school vouchers.
In fact, I've always viewed Asa as the least right-wing of the Hutchinson-Hendren clan, now dynasty--which, I admit, is not saying a great deal.
Unlike his brother Tim, Asa has not been a preacher on the side inclined to wear religion on his political sleeve and thus susceptible to revelations of hypocrisy when inevitable matters of human frailty rear their heads.
In fact, I always thought Asa kind of desired approval from ... not liberals, certainly, but centrists.
Consider Hutchinson's call to Bill Clinton a few weeks ago seeking to let bygones be bygones in the impeachment affair. Clinton, always needing approval himself, was receptive to the overture. These two new pals have talked at least once since then.
Next I recall getting an email from Hutchinson in early 2011 proposing that he and I have lunch at the Copper Grill on a day he was to be in Little Rock teaching a class at the law school. We had that lunch, and I found it pleasant.
That afternoon, back at the state Capitol for the legislative session, I told a couple of Republican political consultants that I'd had the strangest lunch--one with Asa Hutchinson that, while pleasant enough, lacked any context. I said maybe Asa wanted us to be buddies after all the years.
They looked at me and said, "Don't you know? He's running for governor again."
That prospect had not occurred to me. I had assumed that Hutchinson's substantial loss to Mike Beebe in 2006--his third in statewide politics--was his last race. I was certain that his spirit had been broken in the electoral arena.
But it hadn't been. He knew the state's new political climate was giving him one last chance.
Finally, I recall a vignette from the Gillett Coon Supper pre-party at Marion Berry's farm in January 2013.
I was talking with a group of people, one of whom brought up something disparaging I'd written about him at some point. And I said, "Man, I can't remember all the things I've written about people over all these years."
I happened at that point to glance at Asa to find him shaking his head, as if in disbelief or disgust.
I mention that to acknowledge the possibility that he remembers something in our history other than what I've written here.
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John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 01/15/2015