Clinton’s Way Of Life Ending A Lifetime Of Campaigning Comes Down To Two Days
As the presidential motorcade snaked its way toward Air Force One Sunday morning, the wheels came to an abrupt and unscheduled halt. Five dozen sign-carrying Floridians had gathered to wave as it went by. Suddenly, President Clinton was out of his limousine, shaking hands.
The surprised supporters reached for him as if he were a rock star and he eagerly reached back. Someone invited him to stay.
“Take a rain check,” he said cheerily. “We’ve got a lot of miles to go now.”
A lot of miles, yes, but not a lot of hours. With what is probably the last election of his life two days away, Clinton is not ready for it all to be over. Just one more hand. Just one more speech. Just one more state. Bob Dole may be on a 96-hour, nonstop campaign marathon, but the president gives every appearance of wanting to match him.
Clinton, after all, has lived to run. For all the disagreement about his performance as president, even his most bitter Republican foes consider him a consummate campaigner. So for this career politician, these are happy, yet bittersweet days. After 22 years of what consultant Dick Morris called “the permanent campaign,” from that first futile bid for Congress to the governor’s mansion in Little Rock to the White House, Clinton has just about completed his last bid for public office, a prospect he finds so implausible that he jokes about running for school board someday.
“He’s committed to just enjoying the next couple days,” said spokesman Joe Lockhart. The president realizes the finality of these last few events - “not in any sort of melancholy way,” Lockhart said, “but he is soaking it up and appreciating it.”
“He’s not taking spins down memory lane with us,” said White House political director Doug Sosnik, who plays cards (his game is Hearts) with the president between stops. “He talks about it, but there’s not this heaviness about it.”
Yet there are moments of real emotion. The assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, one year ago Monday, seems to weigh heavily on him these days. He has brought it up several times in recent speeches, including Sunday morning in church in Tampa.
In a conversation with reporters on Air Force One Sunday afternoon, he recounted at length his involvement in the historic 1993 handshake between Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his eyes welled up with tears on remembering the shooting two years later.
But as he cruised up the East Coast Sunday in a whirlwind day that started in Florida and took him to New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire, his spirits were buoyant, influenced at least in part by polls predicting victory Tuesday.
“Wow!” he said on seeing the thousands of fans who turned out to see him in Union, N.J., Sunday evening. “Thanks for coming out, standing in the cold, making me feel warm.”
He did not notice, or chose to ignore, the sporadic hostility confronting him at various stops, such as the signs in West Palm Beach, Fla., that said “Clinton is a Liar, a Cheat, a Phony” or a homemade banner spelling out “C-O-R-R-U-P-T-I-O-N” that was promptly ripped into pieces by Clinton supporters.
The West Palm stop had the airy, lighthearted feel of an outdoor summer concert, with families camped out on an airport field on a balmy morning, swaying to music played by Jimmy Buffett. “Does this sound like Woodstock or what?” Buffett cried out before rolling into a specially rewritten version of “Margaritaville” that included the refrain, “It’s all Newt Gingrich’s fault.”
After Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles (D) told the crowd that first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton had been unfairly targeted by Republicans, the president picked up the theme.
“One of the more interesting aspects about the opposition’s effort has been their obsession with my wife,” Clinton said, adding playfully, “Well, I’m obsessed with her too, but in a different way.”