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Brian Harbour, a fine young pastor who...

11:14 PM, Wednesday, May 5, 2010 .. Link

Brian Harbour, a fine young pastor who represented the dwindling ranks of progressive Southern Baptists with whom I identifiedVaught had remained active in retirement until his illness made him too weak to travel and speakA couple of years earlier, he had come to visit me in the Governors MansionHe said he wanted to tell me three thingsFirst, he said he knew I was concerned about the morality of capital punishment, though I had always supported itHe told me that the biblical commandment Thou shall not kill did not forbid lawful executions, because the root Greek word did not cover all killingHe said the literal meaning of the commandment was Thou shall not commit murderSecond, he said he was concerned about fundamentalist attacks on me for my pro-choice position on abortionHe wanted me to know that, while he believed abortion was usually wrong, the Bible did not condemn it, nor did it say life begins at conception, but when life has been breathed into a baby, when it is slapped on the behind after being taken out of the mothers bodyI asked him about the biblical statement that God knows us chanel coin purse even when we are in our mothers wombHe replied that the verse simply refers to God being omniscient, and that it might as well have said God knew us even before we were in our mothers womb, even before anyone in our direct line was born The final thing DrVaught said took me abackHe said, Bill, I think youre going to be President somedayI think youll do a good job, but theres one thing above all you must remember: God will never forgive you if you dont stand by IsraelHe believed God intended the Jews to be at home in the Holy LandWhile he didnt disagree that the Palestinians had been mistreated, he said the answer to their problem had to include peace and security for Israel In mid-December, I went to see DrHe was wasting away, too weak to leave his bedroomHe asked me to move his Christmas tree into his bedroom so that he could enjoy it in his last daysVaught died on Christmas DayJesus never had a more faithful followerAnd I never had a more faithful pastor and counselorNow I would have to navigate the path he had predicted, and the perils of my own soul, without him W hile I was trying to rolex replica supplies decide whether to run again, the governors race was shaping up to be a real donnybrook, whether I ran or notYears of pent-up ambitions were being unleashedOn the Democratic side, Jim Guy Tucker, Attorney General Steve Clark, and Rockefeller Foundation president Tom McRae, whose grandfather had been governor, all announced they would runThey were all friends of mine, and had good ideas and progressive recordsOn the Republican side, the contest was even more interestingIt involved two formidable former Democrats: Congressman Tommy Robinson, who didnt like Washington, and Sheffield Nelson, former president of Arkansas-Louisiana Gas Company, who said he had switched parties because the Democratic Party had moved too far to the leftIt was the standard explanation white southerners gave, but more interesting coming from him because he had supported Senator Ted Kennedy against President Carter in 1980 Robinson and Nelson, and their backers, all onetime friends, went after one another with a vengeance, in a race full of name-calling and mudslinging, which included Robinsons charge that Nelson and louis vuitton demin bags for sale in the uk Jerry Jones, a long-time friend of both men who owned some of the gas fields that supplied Arkla, were rapacious businessmen who soaked Arklas ratepayers for personal gain, and Nelsons charge that Robinson was unstable and unfit to be governorAbout all they agreed on was that I had raised taxes too much and had too little to show for it in terms of educational improvement and economic development On the Democratic side, Steve Clark withdrew from the race, leaving Jim Guy Tucker and Tom McRae, who took a different approach, more clever than that of the Republicans, to discourage me from runningThey said Id done a lot of good, but I was out of new ideas and out of timeTen years as governor was long enoughI couldnt get anything done in the legislature anymore, and four more years would give me too much control over all aspects of state governmentMcRae had met with focus groups of representative voters who said they wanted to continue the direction Id set in economic development, but were open to new ideas from a new leaderI thought there was something to their argument, but I didnt believe they omega de ville men's watches could get more out of our conservative anti-tax legislators than I could Finally, still uncertain of what to do, I set a March 1 deadline to announce my decisionHillary and I hashed it over dozens of timesThere was some press speculation that she would run if I didntWhen asked about it, I said shed be a great governor but I didnt know if she would runWhen I discussed it with her, Hillary said shed cross that bridge if I decided not to run, but what she might do should be no part of my decisionShe knew, before I did, that I wasnt ready to hang it up In the end I couldnt bear the thought of walking away from a decade of hard work, with my last year marked by repeated failures to fund further improvements in educationI never was one for quitting, and whenever I was tempted, something always happened to give me heartIn the mid-eighties, when our economy was in the tank, I was about to land a new industry for a county where one in four people was unemployedAt the last minute, Nebraska offered the company an extra million dollars and I lost the dealI was crushed and felt I had failed the whole dolce and gabbana cou

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