my support went up and down
He said Frank White was terrible for blacks and had to be defeated. He reminded them that Jim Guy had a good civil rights record in Congress and had hired several young black people to work for him. He said Jim Guy would be as good for blacks as I would, and he could win. I like Governor Clinton, he said, but hes a loser. And we cant afford to lose. It was a persuasive argument, all the more so because he had the guts to do it with me sitting there. I could feel the crowd slipping away.
After a few seconds of silence, a man stood up in the back and said hed like to be heard. John Lee Wilson was the mayor of Haynes, a small town of about 150 people. He was a heavy man of medium height, dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, which bulged with the bulk of his huge arms, neck, and gut. I didnt know him very well and had no idea what he would say, but Ill never forget his words.
Lawyer Wilson made a good speech, he began, and he may be right. The governor may be a loser. All I know is, when Bill Clinton became governor, the crap was running open in the streets of my town, and my babies was sick because we didnt have no sewer system. Nobody paid any attention to us. When he left office, we had a sewer system and my babies wasnt sick anymore. He did that for a lot of us. Let me ask you something. If we dont stick with folks who stick with us, who will ever respect us again? He may be a loser, but if he loses, Im going down with him. And so should you. As the old saying goes, it was all over but the shouting, one of those rare moments when one mans words actually changed minds, and hearts.
Unfortunately, John Lee Wilson died before I was elected President. Near the end of my second term, I made a nostalgic trip back to east Arkansas to speak at Earle High School. The school principal was Jack Crumbly, the host of that fateful meeting almost two decades earlier. In my remarks, I told the story of John Lee Wilsons speech for the first time in public. It was televised across east Arkansas. One person who watched it, sitting in her little house in Haynes, was John Lee Wilsons widow. She wrote me a very moving letter saying how proud John would have been to have the President praising him. Of course I praised him. If it hadnt been for John Lee, I might be writing wills and divorce settlements instead of this book.
As we got close to election day, my support went up and down among voters who couldnt decide whether to give me another chance. I was worried about it until I met a man in a caf one afternoon in Newark, in northeast Arkansas. When I asked for his vote, he said, I voted against you last time, but Im going to vote for you this time. Although I knew the answer, I still asked him why he voted against me. Because you raised my car tags.
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