[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 17 (Monday, May 1, 2000)]
[Pages 931-933]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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, ``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 advisor, 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]

[[Page 932]]

    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 State House 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. 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 likeable--[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

[[Page 933]]

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; Mr. Bowen's wife, Connie; 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; and former Senator David Pryor and his 
wife, Barbara.