Aug 26, 2004
Bill Clinton, Poor Boy?
Compared with George H.W. Bush, or W., Bill Clinton grew up poor. But the evidence he provides in his memoir suggests the story he peddled as a politician about his hardscrabble youth was exaggerated.
I am just getting into his memoir. In the first 100 pages or so two things stand out.
1. The time his father shot off a gun in the direction of Bill and his mother.
2. How well-off Bill Clinton was as a youth. He didn't exactly have to beg. His step-father, Roger Clinton, he tells us on page 17, owned the local Buick dealership in Hope. Roger's brother Raymond owned a Buick dealership in Hot Springs. Roger's two best friends also were owners. One owned the local Coca-Cola bottling plant. The other owned a string of drugstores. Bill's best friend was Mack McLarty, son of the owner of the local Ford dealership.
His family moved around. First he lived in a small house. Then they moved to a 400 acre farm. Then they moved into a two-story five bedroom house.
In 1956 his family got a television set--this at a time when most Americans didn't have one. In the summers he attended band camp to hone his music skills. "I went there every summer for seven years." (page 40.)
Throughout his childhood Bill Clinton was tended to by nannies. First there was Cora Walters. She took care of him while his folks were away at work for eleven years. After she left the Clintons, "her daughter Mary Hightower came to work for Mother and stayed thirty more years until Mother died." (p. 23.)
If you are ready to fall out of your chair you really shouldn't be. Bill Clinton, like most presidents, according to a fine study published 20 years ago by Edward Pessen, The Log Cabin Myth, grew up in better economic circumstances than his contemporaries. That you think otherwise is a tribute to the power of the log cabin mythology spun by his media manipulators.
I am just getting into his memoir. In the first 100 pages or so two things stand out.
1. The time his father shot off a gun in the direction of Bill and his mother.
2. How well-off Bill Clinton was as a youth. He didn't exactly have to beg. His step-father, Roger Clinton, he tells us on page 17, owned the local Buick dealership in Hope. Roger's brother Raymond owned a Buick dealership in Hot Springs. Roger's two best friends also were owners. One owned the local Coca-Cola bottling plant. The other owned a string of drugstores. Bill's best friend was Mack McLarty, son of the owner of the local Ford dealership.
His family moved around. First he lived in a small house. Then they moved to a 400 acre farm. Then they moved into a two-story five bedroom house.
In 1956 his family got a television set--this at a time when most Americans didn't have one. In the summers he attended band camp to hone his music skills. "I went there every summer for seven years." (page 40.)
Throughout his childhood Bill Clinton was tended to by nannies. First there was Cora Walters. She took care of him while his folks were away at work for eleven years. After she left the Clintons, "her daughter Mary Hightower came to work for Mother and stayed thirty more years until Mother died." (p. 23.)
If you are ready to fall out of your chair you really shouldn't be. Bill Clinton, like most presidents, according to a fine study published 20 years ago by Edward Pessen, The Log Cabin Myth, grew up in better economic circumstances than his contemporaries. That you think otherwise is a tribute to the power of the log cabin mythology spun by his media manipulators.