In the summer 1992 I lived above a butcher shop - The Fort Mason Meat Market - in the Cow Hollow section of San Francisco. A lot was being made at the time of the upstart Clinton and his cadre of savvy politicos and the experienced George H.W. Bush and his league of most unextraordinary gentlemen. The two butchers who owned the were older men; both of them had served in World War II and had worked in that small market since they got back.
One Saturday I went down to get some chicken for a barbecue. I was wearing my Clinton/Gore '92 t-shirt. One of the butchers noticed it and asked what experience Clinton had to warrant my vote.
I must admit I stammered a bit and said, "Well, we was a good governor in Arkansas." The other butcher heard my somewhat admittedly weak reply and yelled out, "He hasn't done anything except dodge the goddamn draft!"
I figured his was a generational response. I still do.
As history has shown, America circa. 1992 needed a change from Reagan-Bush. Bill Clinton, 46-years old, a guy who felt our pain, who got young people excited in droves to serve their country - he was the right man at the right time. I can remember clearly standing in the voting booth and punching the ballot for Clinton (as well as Feinstein and Boxer) and thinking to myself, "Wow, something good will come out of this." On Election night a couple of buddies and I went to the Fairmont Hotel for the Democratic celebration. Newly elected senators Feinstein and Boxer were there. An incredible night - it felt like we were all saying, "Thank God, we can stop holding our breaths!"
(Also, and this has nothing to do with anything, but the actress Dana Delaney was up on the stage with Feinstein and Boxer. We had no idea why she was there - but my buddies and I will never forget how radiant she looked in a red dress she wore.)
Eight years passed - we all remember what happened - there were some good things - AmeriCorps, psychotic Republicans, budget surplus - and some bad things - impeachment, NAFTA, psychotic Republicans, welfare reform. One aspect of the 90s that no one seems to remember, though, is that there were too many corporate mergers. In fact, it seemed as if the Justice Dept. simply rubber-stamped every merger that came its way (in the mid-90s I was working for a major California legal publisher that bought out its competition, essentially creating a monopoly on legal publications throughout the US). Clinton was the guy who was a lot of things to a lot of people.
And we know that intesified the Republicans' psychoses. They couldn't pin Bubba down. This was why: he was smarter than all of them. Combined. (Now replace "Republicans' psychoses" in the first sentence with "Bill and Hillary's neuroses"; and replace "Bubba" with "Barack." Now you have American Politics, 2008.)
Years later, after I got married, we heard that a friend of a relative of my wife, someone who is big in California Democratic circles, had said that everyone in the party knew that John Kerry would be heading the ticket. How he knew, I had no idea. Especially how he knew in Christmas 2003 still mystifies me. But I guess when you have ties to the Very Important People, the Ones In The Know, then you tend to know how the story will turn out.
If only he could have predicted that "swift-boating" would become part of the American lexicon in the summer of 2004.
Spring 2007: I ask who the family friend says will be the Democratic nominee. "Hillary," I am told without missing a beat. "Not Edwards?" I ask. "No one will come close to Hillary," I am told without missing a beat.
I ask one more question: "What about Obama?"
"Doesn't have a chance," I am told, without missing a beat.
I write this as someone who didn't decide to vote for Obama in the CA primary until about the last week of January. But when I did vote for him, I felt the same way I did when I punched Clinton's name in 1992.
And as everything has progressed since February 5, I understand more and more why Senator Clinton has been holding onto the precipice with one finger. Her loss was not part of the Meta-Narrative: the one created by her monied cohorts; the one enabled by the flaccid press. The one, really, borne of an intense narcissism. When Senator Clinton throws the "kitchen sink," all she proved herself to be was the eight-year old screaming "Someone took my ball!"
This all reminds me of the 1935 Disney cartoon, The Tortoise and the Hare. Everyone knows the Hare will win. The race itself is a formality. But the tortoise, a good-natured sort, just runs his race. As the Hare runs his race, he gets distracted along the road, and smarmily believes he still has all the time in the world to win. When the race concludes and the tortoise, who ran with determination and purpose, wins, the hare, and all in the stands, go nuts. That's just not how it was supposed to be.
So call the last few months the US vs. Russia in 1980; the Dodgers vs. A's in 1988; the Giants vs. the Patriots on February 3, 2008. Never forget: we all knew how those games would end, too.
By running the race he has - determined, purposeful - any by winning the way North Carolina as he did, Obama quieted the cacaphonous Very Important People, cheering on Clinton from the stands.
Onto the summer and fall. Then we get to see the Tortoise (Obama) wind his way through the trainwreck that is McCain. If we thought this spring was interesting...
[MEA CULPA UPDATE: In the final paragraph, I originally analogized Obama to the Hare. This English teacher asks for apologies for this careless proofreading error!)