One last follow up about this as it relates to Bill Clinton. The thing that really tied it up for Clinton was his second stretch as Arkansas governor, 1983-1992.
He let the federal government, through the National Guard Bureau, pump money through his state into Central America to keep the not-so-covert covert war going against the Sandinistas. I'm sure Clinton looked at it as a way to get money from the military that otherwise normally wouldn't have come Arkansas's way (West Virginia did this too, a special project of Sen. Byrd). But one key difference is that in terms of airbourne operations, Arkansas is a lot closer to where (1) much of the US military is already located, such as Florida, Texas, Alabama and (2) closer to the 'theatre of operations', Central America. So one scam the NGB, state national guards and the US military had going was to heavily equip and outfit Guard and Reserve units to do their annual training in Honduras, and then the units would leave much of the gear in Honduras for the contras to get. By not asserting any sort of governor's privilege over all this (contrast this with Dukakis, who has Governor of Mass. somewhat objected) illegal operations he got his state federal spending and he made a lot of friends in the 'national security state'. I don't know what the chicken or the egg is here. Perhaps Clinton was already deep inside the 'national security state' and that is why he made the decisions as governor that he did. But it seems to me that up until that time he would have had a very unlikely path to national-level bipartisan politics. OTOH, after being so unsuccessful in his first term as governor of Arkansas, you do have to wonder about his political comeback, which led to his very successful and long run as governor and then his near-obscure path to Democratic Party nomination for presidential candidate. If nothing else he turned out to be far better at organizing his finances than the other Democrats and so was able to outlast his relatively slow start. Given the obscure source of funds in his earlier life, perhaps Clinton was always the 'candidate' of some element's of the national security state--picked from grad school on. Like Charlie Wilson or Leon Panetta, only more charismatic and less kooky than Wilson and more charismatic than Panetta (Hispanic and Italian names are still a no-no for national politics at the highest level, as are Asian or Asian Indian names or looks). When I saw Obama in 2004--and the reactions his rather awful speech at the convention got--I figured that there was no way we would not see him running for president as a Democrat the next time around (because I was sure Kerry was going to lose). I would bet top Democrats felt it was their best way to counter African Americans like Colin Powell or Condoleeza Rice running as Republicans. The irony is neither of them are very popular with their own party in any sort of grassroots way. That grassroots being so parochial and even to quite an extent more racist and xenophoic than working class Democrats. They don't like Colin Powell for being such an uppity Caribbean self-made -- dare I say it -- intellectual. He seems to quite an extent like a bright but mostly self-educated man (who credits that to the discipline the military gave him, but I rather doubt that). And they probably don't like Condoleeza Rice for her professorial airs and her lesbianism. CJ _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
