Hope above all

The first time I heard Bill Clinton deliver a speech, it stunk. In late 1991, his staff realized that few journalists would travel to Little Rock to interview the governor of Arkansas, so Clinton came to Washington to give the first in a series of speeches at Georgetown University, his alma mater. That talk, on foreign affairs, entitled The New Covenant, was one of the most boring discourses I’d ever heard.
Clinton showed more dynamism later that same day in a speech to the National Education Association. He delivered a twenty-minute barnburner interrupted by applause numerous times. As I listened, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
Arkansas state employee and former night club singer Gennifer Flowers told a supermarket tabloid she’d had a twelve-year affair with Clinton. In response, Bill and Hillary made a memorable appearance on 60 Minutes during which Hillary said, “You know, I’m not sitting here, some little woman ‘standing by my man’ like Tammy Wynette.” But, of course, she was.
At the July Democratic convention I attended in New York City that chose Clinton, the autobiographical film ended with this memorable line, “I still believe in a place called Hope,” a reference to his Arkansas birthplace as well as wider horizons.
In October 1992, I followed the Clinton campaign during a two-day convoy across northern Florida as he and Hillary, along with candidate for Vice-President Al and Tipper Gore, addressed voters at outdoor rallies and evening events. We made quite a cavalcade: motorcycle police, Secret Service in Suburbans, plus fifteen buses bearing staff, supporters, and 100 journalists. The patter from the stage was repeated everywhere, “Unemployment is up; personal income is down. The budget deficit is up; consumer confidence is down.” All of it was accompanied by Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop (thinking about tomorrow).”
The show over, everyone boarded their respective buses to wait while, as usual, a shirt-sleeved Clinton plunged into the crowd and shook hundreds of hands until there was no one left. Rather than board the media bus with the rest, I positioned myself at the edge of the crowd until Clinton was finished.
As we walked together back to the buses, I asked about the pending North American free trade agreement and heard comments no other journalist got that day. Clinton had been wobbly about NAFTA, but now said he was more supportive as long as there was environmental protection and retraining for displaced workers. My patience had paid off.
The following month, Clinton was elected president.