Here's What a Close Friend of the Clintons Said About Them in His Diary

[LiberalArkie]

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/03/dale-bumpers-bill-hillary-clinton-diary



In 1999, three weeks after retiring from the US Senate, Arkansas Democrat Dale Bumpers flew back to the nation's capital to save his friend of 25 years, President Bill Clinton, from impeachment. Delivering the closing argument for the defense during Clinton's Senate trial, he testified to Clinton's character. "In all of those years, and all those hundreds of times we've been together, both in public and in private," Bumpers said, "I have never one time seen the president conduct himself in a way that did not reflect the highest credit on him, his family, his state, and his beloved nation." His speech was hailed by the press—and by Clinton—as a key ingredient in the president's ultimate acquittal.

But Bumpers, who is 89, cast the Clintons in a far different light in his diary, portions of which are included in his personal papers at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. The collection was opened to the public last year. Writing in his journal during the 1980s, as Bill and Hillary Clinton were on the rise in Arkansas, Bumpers was critical of their character and political future, dismissing them as "manic ambitious" and "manic obsessed" and alleging that Bill Clinton's gubernatorial campaign had resorted to "dirty tricks."

Bumpers' relationship with the Clintons stretched back to the mid-1970s. Although he joined the Senate in 1974 by knocking off Bill Clinton's mentor, Democratic Sen. J. William Fulbright, Bumpers had gravitated toward the young Rhodes scholar. Bumpers had been drawn to Clinton, he later told a biographer, after watching the young politician deliver "one of the most beautiful speeches I ever heard." Bumpers backed Clinton's unsuccessful 1974 congressional campaign, as well as his victorious 1978 gubernatorial bid.

But Bumpers soured on Clinton after he was voted out of the governor's office in 1980 after just one term. "Bill Clinton is a truly tragic figure," Bumpers wrote in a June 1982 diary entry, as Clinton was considering a comeback. "I doubt that I’ve ever known anybody as manicly [sic] ambitious for political office, but who simply doesn’t have the judgment or character to deal with it once he gets it.""

Snip

[el_bryanto]

1. This doesn't really seem to be about Hillary

when the bulk of it clearly about Bill Clinton, who I don't believe is running for office again. I don't think I read a specific mention of Hillary, just a few references to the Clintons being ambitious, and then further discussions of Bill Clinton's failing.

Bryant

[GusBob]

2. Jesus that was boring...............Ken Starr he aint

Like taking an early morning nap

[OKNancy]

3. LOL - something written over 30 years ago

Keep trying... it won't work though

ETA: more of article:
Over time, Bumpers' relationship with Clinton improved. He helped keep candidate Clinton anchored during the 1992 presidential campaign, traveling to New Hampshire to provide moral support, and his diary entries from that year are far more measured in his assessment of the future first couple. After he was elected president, Clinton talked to Bumpers and Pryor daily, and leaned heavily on the two senators for help navigating DC's political hazards. When Hillary Clinton was elected to the Senate in 2000, Bumpers penned an op-ed in the New York Times defending her on her merits. "[T]hey will be hard pressed to criticize her personally," he wrote. "She will become a colleague they respect." Last fall, with Bumpers in failing health, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that Bill Clinton had taken a break from campaigning to visit with Bumpers for an hour and tell the former senator he loved him.

The Clintons ultimately won Bumpers over. It may just have saved Bill Clinton's presidency.

[Romeo.lima333]

4. more gop helping

[DemocratSinceBirth]

5. Inside baseball...

Yawn.

[NCTraveler]

6. Interesting little bit.

BC is an amazing man. Whether one likes him or not he has had a pretty extraordinary life. The amount of money made by others from simply writing about him is a true tell of his stature in life. Very cool.

[LiberalArkie]

7. Dale Bumpers and David Pryor brought Arkansas out of the Dixie-Crat era.

Dale is 83 now, So I guess the library is releasing his papers now.