Friend of Bill

The campaign for the Democrat presidential nomination literally took places right in front of my face this morning when I shook hands with former President Bill Clinton at a campaign event. I saw on the news that he’d be campaigning in North Carolina today and drove out to see him with the goal of scoring an autograph.

I arrived at 7:30 at the Bryan Family YMCA Center in Greensboro. The audience was pretty much what I had expected for a 7:45 am event in Greensboro – about 200 people made up mostly of senior citizens and high school and college students. While waiting for Clinton to show up, I struck up a conversation with a black man standing next to me. He is a car salesman who voted for President Bush twice and is considering between Senators Barrack Obama and John McCain. He cited the economy and Iraq as two issues he’s concerned about. He said during the 2001 recession people were not as “afraid” to buy cars as they are today. Earlier this week he attended the Obama town hall event in Greensboro and said the security at that event was “tremendous” compared to that at this event. He also said the audience that came out to see Obama had a much higher percentage of young working professionals.

Clinton finally showed up at around 8:20, took the stage to the tune of Life Is a Highway, and talked for 40 minutes. He complaint about the direction of the country, talked about the great job he allegedly did as President, and praised his wife’s credentials. Multiple times he emphasized a point by pointing out his left index finger in a gesture that I have seen many times in the news throughout the 90s. There were several facts he cited that I wondered about the veracity of. He said his wife was the most “unconventional candidate” in the race because she never served in public office. Later a friend pointed out that Hillary Clinton has been elected twice to the U.S. Senate. I wonder if had misheard. But one other thing he said I knew the moment I heard it was not true and that was that Hillary is currently ahead of McCain in Arkansas, “a state that has voted Democrat for president only three times in the last 44 years.” While Clinton correctly described Arkansas’s voting history in presidential elections, he is wrong that currently Hillary is ahead. I just read last week that Rasmussen Reports has McCain ahead of Hillary by 7 percentage points.





After he got done speaking, he started making his way along the oval shaped boundary that separated the audience from the protective bubble accessible only by campaign staff and Secret Service agents. One of his aides came ahead of collected all the books, pictures, campaign placards, magazine covers, that the spectators were holding out to be signed. Seconds later the former President came by, touched as many hands as he could. I noticed that he has a remarkably weak handshake for a former leader of the free world. After he made his way completely around the oval, he retreated to a room behind the curtains and ten minutes later, his aide came out and redistributed all the memorabilia that have now been autographed.

Updated March 31, 2008 3:38pm: I found a newspaper article about the campaign appearance, with photos and a link to the audio of the entire speech.