Abstract
In the fall of 1970, the young William Jefferson Clinton was supposed to be studying law at Yale. Instead he indulged his first love—politics—campaigning for the Democratic Party’s candidate for a Senate seat in Connecticut, Joseph D. Duffey. The incumbent, Thomas Dodd, had lost the party’s support over misuse of campaign funds. Duffey ran against the Vietnam War and won through the primaries. His Senate bid drew together big hitters from the arts and rising stars in the party. Paul Newman, Arthur Miller, and Barbara Tuchman worked alongside the young Howard Dean and Vice Campaign Chair John Kerry. Bill Clinton proved his worth in the poor Irish and Italian neighborhoods of New Haven. Duffey marveled at his ability to talk to anyone. The campaign was dirty. Hostile banners read “A vote for Duffey is a vote for Khrushchev.”2 Duffey fought hard but lost. He blamed his defeat on neglect of the political middle ground where “somewhere between affluence and grinding poverty stand the majority of American families.” The message stayed with Clinton. He built his career on aiming for the center ground.3
Gosh, I miss the Cold War.
—Bill Clinton, 15 October 19931
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Notes
On Clinton’s sense of international image see David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton and the Generals, New York: Scribner, 2000, esp. pp. 283, 360 and 418.
Douglas Brinkley, “Democratic Enlargement: The Clinton Doctrine,” Foreign Policy, Spring 1997, Vol. 106, pp. 111–127.
Duffey, statement to House Appropriations Committee, subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State etc., 30 April 1996; Duffey, statement to Senate Committee Foreign Affairs, subcommittee on International Operations, 6 March 1997. For background on the concept of civic education, see Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1992;
Adam B. Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1992.
Interview, Geoff Cowan, 3 January 1996. For a biographical sketch of Cowan see Dianne Krieger, “Geoffrey Cowan, communicator with a conscience,” USC Trojan Family Magazine, Vol. 34, No. 3, Autumn 2002, pp. 39–47. Cowan’s younger sister, Holly Cowan Shulman, had written a well-regarded history of the station during the war and suggested that he seek the directorship of the Voice if offered a post in the Administration.
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© 2012 Nicholas J. Cull
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Cull, N.J. (2012). Downsizing: Bill Clinton’s First Term. In: The Decline and Fall of the United States Information Agency. Palgrave Macmillan Series in Global Public Diplomacy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137105363_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137105363_3
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