    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [April 27, 2000]
    [Pages 784-786]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the William H. Bowen Law School
    Dedication Ceremony in Little Rock
    April 27, 2000

        Thank you very much, Derrick, and thank
    you for your great speech. Mack, thank you for being here. I must say,
    when Mack was speaking, he was
    laying it on so thick, I had to lean over and pinch Bill to make sure he
    was still breathing. [Laughter] I said, ``Bowen, are you still alive? Is
    this is a eulogy?'' And he said,

    [[Page 785]]

    ``I guess if Mack ever does run for office, I'll have to support him
    now.'' [Laughter]
        Chairman May, Dr. Sugg, Dr. Hathaway, Dean
    Smith, thank you for your wonderful
    comments. To all the elected officials and former officials who are
    here, Secretary Slater, Senator
    Lambert, General Pryor, Senator Bumpers, Congressman
    Berry, Mayor Dailey; to
    Bill and Connie and your wonderful family; and
    to all of you here who are responsible for this, I want to thank you on
    behalf of Hillary and myself for naming this law school for Bill Bowen.
        I was looking out in this audience today. There are hundreds of
    people I know by first name in this audience. I counted over 20 people
    who were members of one or more of my administrations as Governor in
    some form or another. There are many lawyers here whom I have admired
    since I was a very young man. But as a person who's spent most of his
    life in politics, it's somehow reassuring to me to know that this law
    school is being named for a brilliant man who spent the last 30 years
    trying to avoid practicing law--[laughter]--and seemed to me to have
    succeeded in an outstanding fashion. [Laughter]
        Senator and Mrs. Pryor, it's nice to see you. I didn't see you all over
    there. But I want to say that by the time Bill Bowen agreed basically to
    make it possible for me to run for President--and I say that in all
    sincerity. I was profoundly concerned about what would happen if I were
    to undertake a campaign in 1991, and I wanted to know that the office
    would continue to operate, and that things would go well, and that if I
    needed to make a decision or come home, somebody with enough sense to
    know would tell me and get me on a plane forthwith.
        I'd known Bill Bowen for a long time by then. By then, for a better
    part of two decades, he had been a friend of mine, an adviser, a
    supporter, and a banker. I remember, I had been attorney general about 2
    months when the Arkansas Jaycees named me one of the outstanding young
    men of the year; I knew I didn't deserve it, and I found out later that
    Bill Bowen and Mack McLarty got it
    done. So I'm still trying to live up to it. And unfortunately, I outgrew
    the title before I lived up to it. [Laughter]
        By the time 1991 rolled around, there was only one thing Bill Bowen
    hadn't done for me. He hadn't actually been a full-time member of our
    administration. And so I asked him to become the Chief of Staff, as Mack
    said. He actually took about an hour to agree, and that's a long time
    for Bowen--if you know how he makes decisions. [Laughter] But after all,
    I was asking him to turn his entire life upside down. But he did it. And
    he performed in an absolutely superb way.
        From the time I set foot outside Arkansas to seek the Presidency, I
    knew that the State and the statehouse would be in good hands. I never
    worried about whether decisions would be made in a timely fashion,
    whether anything that should be done was being done, whether there was
    some problem that should be brought to my attention that wasn't. I never
    worried about any of that.
        And so I can honestly say, my friend Bill, if it hadn't been for
    you, I could not have done it. And I hope you're proud of what has
    happened in America for the last 8 years, because your decision to be a
    selfless public servant made it all possible, and I thank you for that.
        One of the things that bothers me is that people in elected office
    sometimes get all the credit for what so many people do. So I hope
    you'll think about that tonight, Bill. More than 21 million people with
    new jobs; longest economic expansion in history; today my staff gave me,
    just before I came up here--today's economic report shows that in the
    first quarter of the 21st century, our economy grew at a rate of 5.4
    percent. That means for the last year our growth rate has been the
    highest it's been in over 15 years, and that's an astonishing thing.
        And I'd also like to tell you that I think my life with you in
    Arkansas had something to do with the economic policies we put in place
    up there. Somebody asked me the other day, when we passed the longest
    economic expansion in history and everybody was celebrating, they said,
    ``Well, what was the major contribution you made to the new economic
    policy, Mr. President?'' And I said, ``Arithmetic.'' [Laughter] I
    brought arithmetic to Washington.
        And you're all laughing, but you're going to be asked to decide this
    year whether to continue arithmetic or return to some other theory, and
    I think we now have evidence with both, and I hope that arithmetic will
    prevail. And I thank you, Bill Bowen, for what you did to make it
    possible.
        I'd also like to thank you, as the President, for your service to
    America in World War II, for flying the Hellcats and Wildcats, for
    waging freedom's fight.

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        I'd like to thank you, as a former Governor, for always being there
    for the cause of the education of our children and for the economic
    development for people and places who were left behind in the 1980's,
    places like Althemier and Hope.
        And I'd like to thank you, too, for being willing to come back and
    help out this law school, and for the role you all had in deciding to
    build this building here around the old university building, to make a
    contribution at once to tomorrow's lawyers and to historic preservation
    and to the character of the McArthur Park Area, which is so important to
    me and to so many others in this audience.
        You could have done something else with the last couple of years of
    your life, and no one would have been able to criticize you. You could
    have decided that after succeeding as a lawyer, a banker, a public
    servant, and a public citizen, you didn't need to prove that you could
    succeed as a law school dean. But it is true that of all the people I
    know, no one embodies the continuing energy and imagination for tomorrow
    any better than you do. So I wasn't surprised when you agreed not to
    grow old but to help the young. [Laughter]
        I told somebody one time that Bill Bowen made me look absolutely
    passive--[laughter]--and that I didn't believe anybody could possibly be
    as aggressive as he was and still be likable--[laughter]--but he managed
    to do it. And I think today answers the question why. Because I always
    had the feeling that whatever he was pushing for was something that was
    going to be good for everybody else, too. And through a long and rich
    life, it's always been true.
        Thank you, Connie, for your friendship. I
    thank all the members of the Bowen family for loving him and keeping the
    rough edges sanded and giving him the anchor that every person needs.
    But most of all, Bill, I thank you for being my friend, for being a good
    citizen, for being a good man, and for being a very powerful example.
        Ladies and gentlemen, our honoree, Bill Bowen.

    Note: The President spoke at 1:03 p.m. on the lawn at the University of
    Arkansas at Little Rock, future site of the law school. In his remarks,
    he referred to Derrick Smith, president, Student Bar Association, who
    introduced the President; former White House Chief of Staff Thomas F.
    (Mack) McLarty; William H. Bowen, former dean, and Rodney K. Smith,
    Donaghey dean and professor of law, University of Arkansas at Little
    Rock School of Law; J. Thomas May, board of trustees chairman, and
    Charles E. Hathaway, chancellor, University of Arkansas at Little Rock;
    B. Alan Sugg, president, University of Arkansas System; State Attorney
    General Mark Pryor; former Senator Dale Bumpers; Mayor Jim Dailey of
    Little Rock; Mr. Bowen's wife, Connie; and former Senator David Pryor
    and his wife, Barbara.