Posted on 01/02/2016 4:14:56 PM PST by EveningStar
Dale L. Bumpers, a liberal governor and four-term Democratic senator from Arkansas who came out of retirement in 1999 to make a passionate closing argument defending President Bill Clinton against removal from office in a Senate trial, died on Friday at his home in Little Rock, Ark. He was 90.
His death was confirmed by his granddaughter Linn Bumpers.
Mr. Bumpers was part of a generation of moderate Southern Democrats, among them President Jimmy Carter, who emerged in the late 1960s and the â70s. He always said his proudest achievement had come early in his career when, as a small-town lawyer in the 1950s, he guided his native Charleston, Ark., to become the first community of the former Confederacy to integrate its public schools.
But he is remembered more for what he did in the twilight of his career.
Three weeks after retiring from the Senate, he returned on Jan. 21, 1999, to speak to his former colleagues on behalf of Mr. Clinton, a fellow former governor of Arkansas. The House had charged the president with perjury and obstruction of justice for lying under oath about his sexual affair with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
They didn’t have decent opponents.. Well, in Bumpers case, he did run against Rockefeller in ‘70, but Winthrop was in deteriorating health. I think Lt. Gov. Footsie Britt should’ve run instead, but he may have realized the ticket was going down and chose not to run for any office that year.
As for Carter in ‘70, he had a very weak left-wing RINO opponent in Hal Suit. A stronger Conservative might’ve done better (perhaps Machine Gun Ronnie Thompson, the Macon Mayor), although Carter was claiming to run as a Maddox Conservative, though that was a lie as well. Gov. Maddox in the late ‘90s personally sent me reams of materials on Carter, with the admonition that he was one of the most amoral and sleazy individuals ever to have run for office. He was dead on the money about that.
I do believe if Reagan had been the nominee in 1976 instead of Ford, he probably would’ve beaten Carter. But as I’ve often pointed out, the downside is that Reagan would’ve faced viscerally hostile Democrat Congressional supermajorities who would’ve been even angrier that they didn’t get a Dem in after Watergate. He would’ve had a very difficult time pushing through his agenda.
DJ, Maddox said Carter was the most dishonest man he ever met; Goldwater said the same of Nixon after he had back Nixon three times.
Then it was many decades past his due to die.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.