Clinton to Forgo Race for White House

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton announced Tuesday that he would not run for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, ending months of speculation by political observers and Clinton’s potential Democratic rivals.

Clinton, 40, a Rhodes Scholar and Yale Law School graduate who is serving his fourth term as Arkansas governor, issued a press release in Little Rock saying that he and his wife, Hillary, a lawyer, want to spend more time with their daughter. He also said he did not want to launch a new campaign after having gone through 15 in the last 13 years.

“I hope I will have another opportunity to seek the presidency when I can do it and be faithful to my family, my state and my sense of what is right,” he said.

“For the past six months, my head has told me to enter this race. But my heart says no.”

Toll on Family

Clinton said repeated campaigns in primaries, runoffs and general elections had taken a toll on his family and himself.

“Our daughter is 7. She is the most important person in the world to us and our most important responsibility. In order to wage a winning campaign, both Hillary and I would have to leave her for long periods of time. That would not be good for her or for us,” he said.

Clinton had been stalking the Democratic presidential race for months. In 34 out-of-state trips this year, he visited Iowa and New Hampshire, the states with the earliest Democratic contests, and several key states in the South, where what amounts to a regional primary will be held on Super Tuesday, March 8.

After the announcements earlier this year by fellow Arkansan Sen. Dale Bumpers that he was not running and by former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart that he was dropping out of the race, Clinton’s supporters had felt that his time had come.

Clinton’s decision took many political observers by surprise. But most of them agree that his absence from the crowded Democratic field will make little difference.

“Instead of Jesse Jackson and the seven dwarfs, we would have had Jesse Jackson and the eight dwarfs,” said Claibourne Darden Jr., an Atlanta pollster and political analyst.

William Schneider, a scholar with the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute and a political consultant to The Times, said Clinton might have filled a slot as the “Southern liberal” against Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr. as the “Southern moderate” and Jesse Jackson as the “Southern radical.”

“But I’m not sure that there’s a big demand for Southern liberals,” Schneider said. “For many white Southern voters, Sam Nunn is about as far left as they want to go.”

Nunn, a conservative Georgia senator and expert on foreign policy and defense, has been widely touted as a prospective Democratic presidential candidate.

Experiences in State

In recent weeks, Clinton had said that his experiences in spearheading economic development and educational reform in Arkansas had given him insight into how to solve some of the problems the nation faces.

At the same time, he said he was not sure that he wanted to tackle another political campaign.

Clinton, who is presiding as chairman of the National Governors Assn., became the nation’s youngest governor in 40 years when he first took office at age 32 after Arkansas’ 1978 gubernatorial election.

Two years later he was ousted by Republican businessman Frank D. White in a close race. Clinton was a victim not only of Ronald Reagan’s landslide 1980 victory, but also of some of his own mistakes, including an ill-advised campaign to raise state driver’s license fees, and a perception among the state’s mostly rural and conservative voters that he was too haughty and ambitious.

Vowing no longer to “lead without listening,” he staged a comeback in 1982, won a third two-year term in 1984 and was reelected last year for his first four-year term, under the state’s new constitutional provisions.