OPINION: Dale Bumpers, 1925-2016, the man who should have been president
“For all sad words of tonque or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!”
History is often dramatically but unknowingly altered by what didn’t happen: the unanswered telephone call, the unwritten song, or the potential candidate deciding not to seek office.
Two weeks ago former Gov. and U.S. Sen. Dale Bumpers of Arkansas died. His lifetime of 90 years was the stuff of America: born in a small town, a hardware dealer during the Great Depression, a butcher, a college educated lawyer who returned home to practice law and convince his local school board to integrate the schools... the first in the old Confederate South to do so, a Marine in World War II who later ran cattle on 350 acres, a governor and senator who should have gone on to become president of the United States.
Dale Bumpers earned his political chops the hard way: as an underdog. The polls showed he had 1 percent of the vote when the unknown Bumpers announced his candidacy for governor of Arkansas against the well-known Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller. Dale won by a landslide 65 percent and has often been called “Arkansas’ greatest governor.” Four years later Bumpers ran for the U.S. Senate against the incumbent J. William Fulbright and again won a landslide majority to become known in Washington, D.C., as “The Giant Killer.” He served Arkansas and America as senator for 24 years.
Bumpers was a tall, slender, intelligent fellow with a smile, laugh, and accent that could, as they say in Arkansas, “charm the ticks off a hound dog.” In 1999 and recently retired from the Senate, Bumpers was asked to defend President Bill Clinton from the impeachment charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. Reluctant to do so, he eventually agreed and presented to the U.S. Senate an extraordinary defense which was later referred to by the president’s attorney Gregory B. Craig as “one of the greatest final arguments given in any American courtroom.”
Several years ago, Dale and I sat talking in his Maryland home about the issues of the day, including the war in the Middle East and the presidency of George W. Bush, both of which we agreed were mistakes. Our conversation came around to the reasons Dale had not sought the White House. He told me he gave it strong consideration in 1976 and again in both 1980 and ’84. He said, “1976 was my best opportunity. America was ready for a liberal Southerner.” That was the year Jimmy Carter won the White House.
Dale went on to discuss his reasons for not running. In ’76 he believed that with only one year as a senator he was not appropriately experienced about national issues. He understood and abhorred the rigors of a national campaign: the growing partisan divide, the constant travel and living for two years in a different motel room every night, and the difficulties of raising tens of millions of dollars of campaign contributions. He had genuinely worried about the effects of constant public pressure on his family, saying, “You know, Pat, presidential campaigns are not exactly softball.”
Listening to Dale that evening and now thinking back on it, I believe his insightful political instinct sensed, even as early as 1976, that something had gone badly wrong with our campaign system: We accept inexperience but otherwise ask too much of our presidential candidates, including the incessant chase for campaign money. He worried about the growing disconnect between an ordinary American’s inabilities to contribute compared with the huge contributions of the super rich.
Our nation is less because Dale Bumpers was never president, but we are also better because he lived and served.
Pat Williams was Montana’s congressman from 1979 until 1997. He lives in Missoula and teaches at the University of Montana.