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Sadly, more than twenty-five years later the federal government and most states still havent followed suit W e started planning for my first term after the primary election in May and really got going after November, converting the headquarters into a transition officeRudy Moore and Steve Smith, who had both served in the legislature, helped me as we prepared budgets, drafted bills to enact my policy priorities, analyzed the major management challenges, and began to hire a staff and cabinet In December, the Democratic Party held its midterm convention in MemphisI was asked to travel across the Mississippi River to moderate a health-care panel featuring Joe Califano, President Carters secretary of health, education, and welfare, and Senator Edward Kennedy, the Senates chief advocate for universal health coverageCalifano was articulate in his defense of the Presidents more incremental approach to health-care reform, but Kennedy won the crowd with an emotional plea for ordinary Americans to have the same coverage that his wealth provided for his son, Teddy, when he got cancerI enjoyed the experience and the national exposure, but was convinced that the convention only highlighted miu miu bow bag our intra-party differences, when it was supposed to unite and reinvigorate Democrats in nonpresidential election yearsThe midterm meetings were later abandoned Not long before Christmas, Hillary and I took a much-needed vacation to EnglandWe spent Christmas Day with my friend from Oxford, Sara Maitland, and her husband, Donald Lee, an American who had become a priest in the Church of EnglandIt was Donalds first Christmas church serviceHe had to be a little nervous, but he began the service with a surefire winner, a childrens sermonHe sat down on the steps in front of a lovely nativity scene and asked all the children to come and sit with himWhen they settled down, he said, Children, this is a very special dayDo you know what day this is? Yes, they saidDonald beamed and asked, What day is it? In unison, they all shouted, Monday! I dont know how he carried onPerhaps he was consoled by the fact that in his church, kids told the literal truth In a month, it was time to move into the Governors Mansion and get ready for the inaugurationThe mansion was a big colonial-style house of about ten thousand square feet in the beautiful old Quapaw Quarter of Little Rock, not far from the montre cartier CapitolThe main house was flanked by two smaller ones, with the one on the left serving as a guest house and the one on the right providing a headquarters for the state troopers who watched the place and answered the phone twenty-four hours a dayThe mansion had three large, handsome public rooms, a big kitchen, and a little breakfast room on the first floor; a spacious basement, which we converted into a rec room complete with pinball machine; and living quarters on the second floorDespite its overall size, the mansions living area occupied just five small rooms and two modest bathroomsStill, it was such a step up from our little house on L Street that we didnt have enough furniture to fill the five rooms The hardest thing about the transition was getting used to the securityI had always prided myself on my self-sufficiency and prized my private timeI had been self-supporting since I was twenty, and over the years had gotten used to cleaning house, running errands, and cookingWhen Hillary and I got together, we shared the household dutiesNow other people cooked the meals, cleaned the house, and ran the errandsSince I was sixteen, I had enjoyed driving alone in my own car, listening miu miu nappa to music and thinkingI couldnt do that anymoreI liked to jog every day, usually before or after workNow, I was being followed by a trooper in an unmarked carIt really bothered me at firstit made me want to run up one-way streets the wrong wayIn time I got used to it and came to appreciate the work the folks at the mansion and the troopers did; they gave me more time for the jobBecause the troopers drove me, I got a lot of paperwork done in transitEventually we agreed that Id drive myself to church on SundaysIt wasnt much of a concession, since my church and the Methodist church Hillary attended were both within a mile of the mansion, but I really looked forward to my Sunday freedom rideOne of the troopers ran with me when he was on duty, and I liked that a lot better than being followedAfter I had been in office several years and there was clearly no imminent threat, I often ran alone in the mornings, but along a predictable downtown route with lots of people aroundFrequently I ended those runs at the McDonalds or the local bakery, both about a half mile from the mansion, where Id get a cup of water, then walk back home The troopers did have real security work to do on chanel classic bags occasionIn my first term, an escapee from one of our mental institutions called the mansion and said he was going to kill meSince he had decapitated his mother a few years earlier, they took it seriouslyHe was caught and returned to confinement, which might have been his subconscious desire when he calledOne day, a massive man carrying a railroad spike walked into the governors office and said he needed to meet with me all aloneIn 1982, when I was trying to regain the governors office, a man called and said hed had a message from God telling him my opponent was the instrument of the Lord and I was the instrument of the devil and he was going to do Gods will and eliminate meHe turned out to be an escapee from a Tennessee mental institutionHe had an odd-caliber revolver and went from gun store to gun store trying to buy ammunition for it, and because he couldnt produce any identification, he didnt succeedStill, I had to wear an uncomfortable bulletproof jacket for several days near the end of the campaignOnce, when the front door was accidentally left unlocked, a deranged but harmless woman got halfway up the stairs to our living quarters before the troopers caught her as she was calling out chanel white purses t