Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton “absolutely” needs to answer for standing beside her husband when he affirmed a Confederate part of the Arkansas flag, Bill Clinton’s former chief strategist told CNN Tuesday.
In 1987, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton signed off on a measure confirming that “the blue star above the word ‘Arkansas’ is to commemorate the Confederate States of America.”
When asked whether Hillary Clinton should speak about her former role as the state’s first lady, Begala said she should. She has not said much about the Confederate flag nor her role as first lady of Arkansas.
“Well, sure, absolutely,” he said. “Times change. Circumstances change.”
Begala, Bill Clinton’s chief strategist in the 1992 presidential campaign, mentioned his own experience fighting the controversial flag 22 years ago. He recalled former Georgia Gov. Zell Miller, who tried to “take on the flag.”
“Twenty-two years ago Zell Miller tried to take [the Confederate symbol] off, with, by the way, the help and support of his friend Bill Clinton,” he said. “And we failed. The people of Georgia kicked our butt.”
After that loss, it took seven more years for the removal of the “Southern Cross” from the Georgia flag to be brought up again.
“Miller used to say this: ‘I cannot call myself a progressive Southern governor if I’m not out front on changing the flag,'” his former chief of staff, Keith Mason, recalled in an interview Monday. “He was the forerunner of it. And he paid a big price for it.”
Although Bill Clinton backed Miller’s proposal to redesign Georgia’s flag, while governor he raised no objections to Confederate Flag Day, an Arkansas celebration that allows people to show old Arkansas and Confederate flags.
“This is a very, very difficult issue,” Begala said. “I am really thrilled at the rapid progress, after 20 years of waiting, that South Carolina has made and the fact that corporate America is now weighing in.”
