The Clinton Impeachment | 3. Cred
Slow Burn
Slate Audio
4.6 • 25.2K Ratings
🗓️ 22 August 2018
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When Bill Clinton went to Washington, rumors and accusations from his Arkansas past went with him. But even his most dedicated political enemies couldn't predict where their efforts would lead.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Cliff Jackson insists that he never hated Bill Clinton. |
| 0:03.8 | Here's what he said about it when I interviewed him earlier this year. |
| 0:06.7 | With all my reservations about his character, I still thought that he had the potential to be |
| 0:14.6 | one of the greatest presidents we've ever had. |
| 0:18.6 | Jackson said pretty much the same thing back in 1994, when it was clear that he |
| 0:23.0 | was doing everything he could to weaken Clinton's presidency. I am not an enemy of Bill Clinton. |
| 0:29.3 | Enemy to me implies personal animus, personal animosity, and I don't have that. That's not why |
| 0:35.4 | I'm doing what I'm doing. You'll hear about what Cliff Jackson was doing and why in just a second. First, I want to tell you the story of how he and Clinton met. It goes back to 1968, when the Vietnam War was at its height, and Clinton and Jackson were both enrolled at Oxford. The future president was on a Rhodes Scholarship, and Jackson was on a Fulbright. |
| 0:55.1 | He came by my room and introduced himself. He was a gregarious, affable fellow, upbeat, very |
| 1:02.4 | loquacious, loved to hear himself talk, and normally the personality type that doesn't resonate |
| 1:08.9 | with me. But he was from Arkansas, and I was from Arkansas. |
| 1:13.2 | We're two archies at Oxford, so we became friends. |
| 1:21.2 | Besides being from Arkansas, Clinton and Jackson had something else in common. |
| 1:25.4 | They were both interested in politics, and they both |
| 1:27.9 | had plans to run for elected office when they came home from Oxford. In a lot of ways, though, |
| 1:33.2 | the two young men were opposites. For one thing, Clinton was a Democrat, and Jackson was a Republican. |
| 1:39.7 | For another, Clinton was outgoing and popular, while Jackson was kind of a sad sack. The journalist |
| 1:45.6 | David Marinus once wrote that Jackson spent most of his first term at Oxford cold and lonely, |
| 1:50.7 | taking some small comfort in hot soup that he cooked up in a crock every afternoon. After returning to |
| 1:57.1 | Arkansas, Clinton and Jackson stayed in touch, but their lives went in different |
| 2:01.3 | directions. In 1976, Jackson ran for district attorney in Pulaski County, Arkansas. |
| 2:07.9 | He lost the race, but he assured me that he was not upset about it. |
... |
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