Clinton Visits Appalachia, Hope in Hand

During eight years in the White House, Ronald Reagan never tired of offering his version of the most feared words in the English language: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

Bill Clinton set out Monday to prove him wrong.

With a can of Mountain Dew in his hand and captains of capitalism at his side, the president tracked through the coal towns of Hazard and Tyner in the 97-degree heat of the eastern Kentucky highlands. Poverty rates in these parts are greater than 30%, and unemployment in at least one county is as high as 26%, five times the national average.

“We know government can’t solve these problems alone,” the president declared on the first stop of his four-day, six-stop tour of poverty-stricken areas that will end in the Watts area of Los Angeles, with a conference with business leaders in Anaheim to follow. “But we know that we’ll never get anywhere by leaving people alone either.”

Three other Democratic politicians--Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy of New York and President Lyndon B. Johnson--found the same distress when they visited Appalachia more than a generation ago. They sought to use a flow of government dollars to push the stagnant eddies of the area into the mainstream of the American economy.

Clinton has staked out a position somewhere between traditional Democrats’ big government and Reagan’s no government.

To underscore his conviction that government can act as a catalyst for private investment in such places as these, Clinton already had obtained promises from banking, insurance and communications companies to invest more than $9 million in Appalachia.

Beyond personal cajoling, Clinton’s New Markets Initiative, pending before Congress, promises tax credits, subsidies and debt financing to corporations that invest in poverty-stricken areas such as this. The legislation’s goal is $15 billion in private investment over five years.

“Look here, America,” Clinton declared Monday. “We’ve got people working out here and doing fine and doing marvelous things.

“Look here, business community. Take another look. There are great opportunities here.”

That was good enough for Herman Stamper, 63 years old and retired seven years as an instructor in a county vocational school. Fanning himself with a slab of cardboard, he responded when asked what a president could offer the community: “I don’t know, but some good will come out of it, him just being here, you know.”

Hazard is smack in the geographic and emotional center of Appalachia, a storied land of good natural resources and bad luck, of green mountain hollows and black lung disease, of bubbling creeks and falling hopes.

Coal remains the centerpiece of the local economy, but throughout Appalachia, coal-related jobs have fallen from 250,000 in 1979 to 100,000 in 1999, largely as a result of technological innovations, the federal government says. In Perry County, where Hazard is the county seat, 30% of the people live below the poverty level.

To turn these communities around, Clinton regards federal dollars as necessary but not sufficient. With a team of business executives and civil rights leader Jesse Jackson at his side, Clinton is trying to demonstrate that nothing will work unless the private sector realizes that it stands to gain by investing in blighted communities and turning them into new markets.

“A lot of good things came out of the Great Society, but government programs that come in with largess aren’t a success long-term,” a senior White House aide said.

The president hopes that he can use the tour to put the squeeze on Congress to approve his initiative.

From here, Clinton’s itinerary will take him today to the epitomes of urban and rural poverty: East St. Louis, Ill., and the Mississippi Delta. Then it’s on to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, an impoverished corner of Phoenix and, on Thursday, Watts.

In Tyner on Monday, the president visited a neighborhood of about 100 people called Whispering Pines. To picture the place, think neither pines nor gentle breezes. Think of trailer homes and ramshackle structures with tar-paper roofs.

The president sat down on a lawn chair, the can of soda in his hand, a walnut tree offering the only shade.

His hosts were the extended members of the Pennington family: Ray Pennington, who has emphysema and needs a portable oxygen tank to help him breathe; his daughter, Jean Collett, 48, who quit her job at a Dairy Queen to care for him; and a passel of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Yes, Collett said, there have been improvements since electricity was hooked up in 1961: Five years ago, water began flowing in the bathroom for the first time.

The best job in the family is held by her son-in-law, who makes $6.30 an hour at Mid-South Electrics Inc., which manufactures ice makers, telephone switching equipment and battery chargers.

“Old timer,” Pennington said to the president, the first he has met, “I’ve lived 69 year and you’re the first ‘un I ever see’d.”

“Well,” replied Clinton, “everybody’s entitled to meet one president, don’t you think? People expect you to vote every election. You ought to meet one now and then.”