Reelection: William Jefferson Clinton as a Native-Son Presidential Candidate(Power, Conflict, and Democracy: American Politics Into the 21st Century)

Since the passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, only three Democrats have captured the White House-all of them natives of southern states. The ascendancy and reelection of Bill Clinton to the presidency is a prime example of this phenomenon, and although books have been published on the "native son" psychological variable in electoral contests, no work to date has investigated this aspect of Clinton's political career. Covering all of Clinton's twenty-one elections to state and national offices, Hanes Walton Jr. explores one of the political success stories of our century, showing how Clinton's popularity in his southern home has had a profound influence on his national electoral dominance. Walton combines the native-son theory with the issue of race to describe how the Democrats have built a vital power base in the South, in large measure because of their popularity among African-American voters. With an epilogue on the Monica Lewinsky scandal and its effect on the Democratic Party, Reelection is a major contribution to the literature on the psychology of national elections at a time when its insight into the possibility of Democratic leadership into the next century is most critical.

Table of Contents:
Foreward Preface Introduction Prologue 1. Elections 1. Epistemology and the Native-Son Candidate 2. Theory 3. Methodology 2. The Political Context of a Native-Son Candidate 4. The Arkansas Electorate 5. The African American Electorate 3. The Making of a Native-Son Candidate 6. The Congressional Vote for Clinton 7. The Attorney General Vote for Clinton 8. The Gubernatorial Vote for Clinton 4. The Native-Son Presidential Candidate 9. The Presidential Vote for Clinton 10. The Regional Vote: Clinton and Carter 5. The Native-Son Candidate and Democratic Elections 11. The Democratic Party in Presidential Elections: The Native-Son Theory Revisited Endnotes Appendix: The Election Data-A Research Note

About the Author :
Hanes Walton Jr. is professor of political science at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He has been a Guggenheim, Ford, and Rockefeller Fellow, and is the author of eleven previous books on elections, race, and African-American politics, including African-American Power and Politics (Columbia, 1997) and The Native-Son Presidential Candidate: The Carter Vote in Georgia.

Review :
Sophisticated and impressive. Journal of American Studies