User:Sandridge/Arnold Hiatt

Arnold Hiatt is an American.

Research
Following text found at http://www.fixcongressfirst.org/blog/entry/the-democrats-response-to-citizens-united-not-even-close-to-good-enoug/

In 1996, Stride Rite founder Arnold Hiatt tried to inspire then President Bill Clinton to make it a priority for the Democrats of that day. Hiatt was then the number-two largest contributor to Democratic candidates He was invited to a White House dinner with 30 other large funders so that the President could try to persuade them to help retire the Party's 1996 campaign debt. Each guest was asked to give the President his or her advice for the next four years. Hiatt was the last to speak.

He began by evoking Franklin Roosevelt, whom Clinton, Hiatt knew, admired greatly. In 1939, Hiatt reminded the assembled funders, Roosevelt worked hard to convince a reluctant nation to enter a war to save democracy. This, Hiatt insisted, was just what Bill Clinton had to do again -- to convince a reluctant nation to enter a war to save democracy. But this war would require no tanks or battleships. It would instead be the war to end private funding of public elections, to enact full funding for congressional elections, so that Americans would no longer believe as the vast majority even then believed that money buys results in Washington. It would be a war against interests that had corrupted the democratic process in America; a war against the very interest sitting in that room with Clinton.

When Hiatt finished, the room was silent. And the only published account of that evening reports a President impatient with his reformer-funder. Clinton, one guest that evening recounts, "effectively slashed Hiatt to pieces." "The president put this guy down so unbelievably. He didn't even do it graciously. He just took Arnold and phooom, like he would some junior aide who had made a really dumb mistake." Hiatt doesn't remember Clinton being that harsh, but he does recall feeling like a "skunk at a lawn party."

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/20/business/stride-rite-chairman-to-resign.html?pagewanted=1

Stone, Nan, 'Building Corporate Character: An Interview with Stride Rite Chairman Arnold Hiatt,' Harvard Business Review, March-April 1992, p. 94.

TO DO
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