“For all our flaws, the idea of America was powerful, and it was the reason why it was a magnet for people from other parts of the world to come here.”
Kyle Kellams: Sometimes I have to say, Randy Dixon, tell me who we just heard. But Randy Dixon, I don't think we have to tell many people who we just heard.
Randy Dixon: No, that was clearly Barack Obama, former 44th president of the United States, who was in northwest Arkansas just last week. And that was from his talk at Crystal Bridges. It was part of a lecture series called Building Bridges. It was a Q&A hosted by Olivia Walton. It lasted a little over an hour. You were there, right?
Kellams: She was the moderator. I was. It was billed as being an hour, but I don't think anyone had a problem with this. It went about an hour and 15 minutes. As he said at one point, he jokingly told Olivia Walton, this is what happens when you ask open-ended questions of a former U.S. senator. He didn't answer anything abruptly, but no one wanted him to.
Dixon: Exactly. It was very relaxed.
Kellams: By the way, let me also tell people, just in case they don't know: you're Randy Dixon with the Pryor Center.
Dixon: Hi.
Kellams: Hi. And we do this almost every Monday where we look back at some history. Now we're talking about something that's very recent history. But the reason we're talking about it
Dixon: Tie in with the archives. Always find some way to do that. And this isn't much of a stretch either. This was Barack Obama's not his first, but his third trip—only his third trip—to Arkansas. And I'm guessing that's why it was so popular. It was sold out. And I say sold out, the tickets were free. They were offered to Crystal Bridges members, and that 750-seat venue filled up in a matter of minutes.
Kellams: In fact, there were some people who got online—it was a random generator who got in—and some people were 39,000 in place.
Dixon: That’s right.
Kellams: So not everyone got in.
Dixon: Right. But if you got one, that was the hot ticket to have. And it was certainly worth having. So let's listen to a clip from last week. There's so much talk about where democracy is today, where it isn't today. Here's just a little clip of him talking about the current fragility of democracy in America.
“I think it is true that we are more divided and that our democracy is more unstable than any time in my lifetime. Not in American history. I mean, you know, we did have like a Civil War and stuff. I mean, there have been some pretty big breakdowns in the process.
“But I would say that the order, the system, the sets of institutions that were built after World War Two and then refined over the course of subsequent generations, I think those are unstable in ways I would not have expected. I would not have expected the legitimacy of an election and the peaceful transfer of power to have been challenged. I thought that was something that would not happen today.
“I would not expect the politicization of the Justice Department or our military. And I don't think that's happened. I think there's been resistance, particularly in the military, to that. But the degree to which that has been encouraged, you know, that used to be something that I would lecture other countries not to do.
“You don't have your military involved in partisan politics. Its loyalty is to the Constitution. Its loyalty is not to any party, and it is not to any president.”
Kellams: As you mentioned, his visit to the Heartland Whole Health Institute—it was a Crystal Bridges event, but it was at the Heartland Whole Health campus.
Dixon: Yes, on campus. Right.
Kellams: That was his third visit to Arkansas.
Dixon: His first was actually before he was president, when he was a U.S. senator from Illinois. There was talk of him running for president. That certainly hadn't happened. This was in Oct. 2006. It was a midterm election, and a lot of Democrats were on the ticket for statewide races. He came to town for a big Democratic Party rally at the state Capitol. Here's part of the newscast with Anne Pressly and Amanda Manatt from Oct. 28, 2006:
“The freshman senator from Illinois, who many say could be a contender for president, is right here in the natural state this evening…”
“...Senator Obama just finished speaking to a crowd of hundreds in front of the state Capitol. He's rallying support for the state's Democratic Party, including gubernatorial candidate Mike Beebe.”
“He appreciates the role that government can play in giving somebody a hand up, not a handout, somebody who recognizes that government's job is to work for the people, not for special interests, not for the politicians themselves...”
“Meanwhile, Republican gubernatorial candidate Asa Hutchinson spent the day campaigning and said he welcomed Obama's visit.”
“I think it's terrific. I welcome Senator Obama to Arkansas. I think it's good for our state. Anytime someone of national prominence can come here, learn about the state.”
“Arkansas isn't. Senator Obama's only stop, just ten days away from the midterm election. Senator Obama has been campaigning for Democratic candidates around the country.”
Kellams: I just want to point out the quote from Governor Asa Hutchinson. How measured. How calm. Just uplifting. Like, ‘oh, I love it when anyone of national prominence comes to Arkansas’. That's all. I just wanted to point that out.
It was very classy. Hey, enough said, right? He wasn't on the radar yet—
Kellams: Obama?
Dixon: Yeah. There was talk that he could run for president, and the now-famous Affordable Care Act wasn't even named yet. But he was certainly talking about health care that day in 2006:
“We as a nation can spend more money on health care than any nation on earth, and yet we have some of the worst outcomes of any industrialized nation.
“How is it we've got 46 million people uninsured, and every family that has health insurance has seen their copayments and deductibles and premiums going up each and every year?
“People say, why can't we get together and do some common-sense things? Make sure that every child has health insurance so that they have preventive care and primary care, so that instead of going to the emergency room, we treat their asthma or their diabetes early. They don't get it in the first place… We save money. Everybody wins. Why wouldn't we do something like that? So people say maybe it's time for a change.”
This was weeks before the election, and the entire Democratic ticket was represented at that rally. There was Mike Beebe—
Kellams: Who won.
Dixon: Bill Halter—
Kellams: Who did not. No, he did, didn't he?
Dixon: Because he was running for lieutenant governor. Yes. Uh, Dustin McDaniel—
Kellams: For attorney general.
Dixon: Yes. Charlie Daniels—-
Kellams: Land commissioner.
Dixon: Yes, won. So at this point, Arkansas is still a Democratic state. You know, we've talked several times on this segment about how Arkansas moved so quickly from blue to red. Well, it was still blue at the time. I kind of wanted to get a feel of what the state was like at that time as far as Republicans rising, possibly Democrats falling. So the perfect person to talk to is my boss, John Davis. Yeah. The executive director of the Pryor Center. He's also a political science professor here on campus. So I asked him to kind of give us a just a sketch of, uh, politics in Arkansas:
“In Arkansas, you've got a historically Democratic state. You've got Mike Beebe, a charismatic, popular attorney general running for governor after a long legislative career. He's running against Asa Hutchinson, who had served in the Bush administration and in many ways was trying to reacquaint himself with state politics.
“It was a tough year for the GOP and a very good midterm election nationally and in Arkansas for Democrats. But Democrats don't enjoy many more of those after 2006.”
“So in 2008, um, then Senator Obama loses to Senator McCain in Arkansas. Um, has a relatively easy victory, uh, nationally in 2008. But really, from the jump, um is not seen terribly favorably in Arkansas, for myriad reasons. But over his eight years in office, and it's not directly to his, you know, doing something wrong. But after over eight years of office, we see the state of Arkansas transition from numerically one of the most Democratic states in the country.
“If we were to look at the percentage of partisan seats and you know that they were in the Democratic camp to one of the most Republican states in the country.”
Kellams: So this switch from blue to red is about to happen after this election. And the state becomes so solidly Republican, so solidly red, that candidate Barack Obama never comes to campaign here. I mean, what’s the point?
Dixon: Exactly. I mean, that's over his next two terms. So let's hear from John Davis again.
“As far as campaigning is concerned, Arkansas leading up to 2008 was heavily tilted toward Republican nominees for president and had been for years outside of Bill Clinton. And I think there would have been an assumption with the Obama campaign, particularly in the primaries, that the state was going to go heavily for Hillary Clinton. And then if she later on were to not be the nominee—in this case, Senator Obama was the nominee—as it happened, it was not likely he would be terribly competitive in Arkansas.
“Arkansas for decades, even in an era such as this—2006, 2007, 2008—while the state was overwhelmingly Democratic for state offices, constitutional offices, members of Congress, state legislature, we already had an established long tradition of favoring Republican nominees for president.”
Kellams: All right. So we know earlier this month was his third visit. We know this rally was his first. What's the one in between?
Dixon: He actually came during his presidency, in his official capacity as president. In 2014, on April 27th of ’14, a high-end EF4—and we're talking high end—ripped through Arkansas. Especially hard hit were the towns of Mayflower and Vilonia. But if you recall, in all there were 16 people killed, more than 100 injured. And that twister was on the ground for almost an hour. For 41 miles it was on the ground, and sometimes it was three-quarters of a mile wide.
Kellams: You can still see some of the physical scars on the landscape from this tornado.
Dixon: Yes. And this was right after I had moved to Fayetteville. Driving back, it went right over the interstate and just obliterated everything on each side. But here's the newscast of when Obama came to visit. This is May 7th of 2014:
“President Barack Obama tours tornado damage in Vilonia today, telling Arkansans they have his full support. Thanks for watching tonight. I'm Beth Hunt.”
“And I'm Scott Inman. We are live in Vilonia tonight, where tonight it is somewhat business as usual, or at least business as usual as it has been over the last ten days since the April 27th tornado. You wouldn't have known that it was just a couple of short hours ago that President Barack Obama made his first trip as sitting president to the state of Arkansas. It was a short trip, only about three hours that he was in the natural state and only about two that he was on the ground here in Vilonia. But nonetheless, it was an important visit. It was a historic visit. We bring in Channel 7's Jason Pederson with more on the president's trip.”
“...Especially under these circumstances, with the exception of President Clinton, only one other sitting U.S. president had visited Arkansas on the heels of a natural disaster. You had to go way back to 1927 for that. That was Herbert Hoover. He came to Arkansas, visited Arkansas City and Pine Bluff following flooding. And now a tornado brought President Barack Obama to Arkansas today. After meeting with mayors and first responders, the president got an up-close and personal look at Parkwood Meadows—one of the hardest-hit neighborhoods here in Vilonia. Not only was nearly every home in that neighborhood lost, but there were lives lost there as well. The president visited with survivors and then, flanked by federal, state, and local officials, he pledged to all of Arkansas' storm-ravaged communities that the federal government was going to be here for the long haul.”
“And I'm here to make sure that they know, and that everybody who's been affected knows, that the federal government's going to be right here until we get these communities rebuilt. Because when something like this happens to a wonderful community like this one, it happens to all of us. And, you know, we've got to be there for them.”
Kellams: That was, as president, Mr. Obama's only visit to the state, right? As when he was a resident of the White House.
Dixon: Yes. Yeah. So those were the three visits that he has made here. They were saying on the newscast that it was a very short visit. Well, he was here for three hours. And in the day of a president—and I think people had gotten spoiled when you had eight years of Bill Clinton.
Kellams: who would come here to relax.
Dixon: Oh, at least once a month. Yeah.
Kellams: And also, if someone says you're going to be in the dentist chair for three hours, that's not a brief visit.
Dixon: Good point. That's a long time.
Kellams: You want to go out with something else he said? But before that, there was assistance on this work that you did for this one, right?
Dixon: Yes.
Katie Shelton: Hi, I'm Katie Shelton. I helped with writing…
Dixon: Researching. We pulled up—there were actually some odd obstacles in researching. When we started looking up his visit in October of ’06, there was no date listed anywhere on the internet.
Shelton: It was a scavenger hunt to try and figure out what happened when.
Kellams: Wow.
Dixon: And the only clue we had was that they were afraid the turnout might be lower for the rally because there was a Razorback game.
Kellams: So then you used that information.
Dixon: So we checked in October, and there were, of course, the four Razorback games. Then we had to check those four dates and then figured out that it was the 28th.
Kellams: Wow.
Dixon: Arkansas and A&M, maybe.
Kellams: Hmm.
Dixon: But yeah. It was a great help. And she's going to be here next semester, too.
Kellams: Excellent All right, so you're enjoying what you're doing at the center. What's your major?
Shelton: Yes I am. I'm political science and journalism, and I'm a junior.
Dixon: She's in the perfect spot.
Kellams: There you go. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Let's go out with some more words from President Obama.
Dixon: Yeah. Let's just hear some closing comments about politics and democracy:
“It's the old adage attributed to Churchill: democracy is the worst form of government—except for every other system they've thought of. I mean, it's annoying, it's infuriating, it's slow, it's frustrating, it's inefficient. But you know what it doesn't result in? It doesn't result in the Holocaust. It doesn't result in gulags. It doesn't result in the Cultural Revolution and millions of people starving. It doesn't result in people being afraid to speak their mind or worship the way they want or be able to read books that aren't prescribed. Yeah, I'll take a little frustration and inefficiency and stick with freedom and everybody being able to express themselves and try to figure out how we work together.”
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
