Clinton returns to Arkansas

BY GLENN THRUSH | Newsday Washington Bureau

July 16, 2006

ROGERS, Ark. - Hillary Rodham Clinton signed just about anything that north Arkansas Democrats shoved into her hands yesterday - except for those big crimson signs that read: "Madame President, January 20, 2009."

The New York senator, an Illinois native who first came to the state in 1974 as a low-paid law professor and exited 18 years later as first lady of the United States, ventured into conservative Benton County as a possible Democratic presidential front-runner.

After delivering a speech to 600 members of the Arkansas Federation of Democratic Women in Rogers, Clinton headed 20 miles south to visit the small Fayetteville house where she and Bill Clinton were married in 1975, now a $5-a-head museum.

"I was just flooded with emotions and memory," she said of her first trip to the area since 2003.

The two-day trip to her former home state included a passionate pitch to middle-class voters, some local party-building, a little Bush-bashing and a sentimental journey for a politician not typically given to sentimentality.

Speaking with a slight Southern lilt, she recalled how she vacillated when Clinton asked to marry her three decades ago, and how he'd bought her the house on California Drive when she was out of state as a way of encouraging a "yes."

Marrying him, she said, was "like marrying a force of nature."

Clinton, who was wearing her signature black pantsuit, burst out laughing when she entered her old living room and saw a replica of her white lace wedding dress on display. "Oh my goodness - this is great! Oh, wow," she said, chuckling.

Arkansas has turned markedly to the right since she's been gone, but she was greeted with deference and delight, bumping into old friends and admirers even as she left the ladies room of Benton's John Q. Hammonds Convention Center.

"I want her to run for president," said Sheila Castin, 59, a retired state worker.

When speaking to reporters later, Clinton voiced support for Israel's bombing of Lebanon in general and of the Beirut airport in particular. "I support Israel's right to defend itself and to try to take stern and strong action against Hezbollah, which is a terrorist organization, and send a message to their masters in Damascus and Tehran."

A polite throng of about 20 anti-war protesters stood outside the event, similar to the reception she's gotten at New York campaign appearances. "She needs to stand up for something," said Gen Buonaito, a bookbinder and artist from Fayetteville.