GOP's Arkansas Foray Retreats in Confusion
Lewis Yancy was to be Exhibit A in the Republican case that Bill Clinton is the "failed governor of a small state."</br></br>He sat at the end of a card table, a battery of microphones in front of him, and the Three Amigos of a visiting Republican delegation at his side - Labor Secretary Lynn Martin, Republican National Committee General Chairman Samuel K. Skinner and Council on Environmental Quality Director Michael Deland.</br></br>The national figures shook their heads, smiled and furrowed their brows at appropriate times as Yancy recounted instances when local banks had turned him down for loans because they said he had insufficient collateral. But he never mentioned any problems with Clinton. As a reporter tried to direct a question at Yancy, Clinton's Arkansas archenemy Sheffield Nelson abruptly shut down the meeting.</br></br>The traveling party moved on. Yancy, who was recruited from his furniture store this morning by a local minister and "some gentlemen from Washington," was left with no idea why he had been selected for the news conference. "As far as I know, he's been a good governor," Yancy said of Clinton. "As far as I know, he's done exactly what he said he would do. Most of his promises, he has fulfilled them. I don't think we've had a better governor." "Every time," Yancy said proudly when asked whether he had voted for Clinton. And he said he would vote for him again in November.</br></br>And so it went throughout the opening hours of the much-touted Republican barnstorming tour through Arkansas. Whatever points were to be made about Clinton's governance of this impoverished state were overshadowed by a series of uncharacteristic planning blunders by a party that was once thought to be unsurpassed in the techniques of modern American campaigns.