Bill Clinton has been peppering Hillary supporters in Texas with this warning, "And I can tell you that the other campaign believes Hillary will probably win in the daytime, and then they'll come in at the night and take away the delegates she won in the daytime." This assertion, which he has made several times, is characteristic of the stump speeches Clinton has been delivering across the state. Partly because until today only local media have been taking note of him, and cursorily, Clinton has been traveling free. Texas has been an opportunity for him to push hard on what he can get away with, and he's been relishing the consequent and inherent danger. Texas has seen a very different Bill from the one campaigning in Ohio. According to The New York Times, Clinton has been "muzzled and leashed" and "subdued." Clinton may be watching his words in Ohio; here in Texas he's not been so cautious. Because he's been less supervised? Or because there's just something about the South that brings out the inner rebel?
Before Gloria Steinem showed up in Austin over the weekend, Bill Clinton, with a little help from his daughter, has been the lone surrogate in the Lone Star State for Hillary. Appearing in front of crowds that are sometimes small (less than two hundred), Clinton has made the case for his wife from Texarkana to Corpus Christi, from El Paso to Austin, and from four different venues one morning in Houston. This weekend he's been back--Houston again, College Station, Marshall, Wichita Falls, Abilene, Edinburg, Brownsville, Laredo and Eagle Pass. On the one hand, Clinton seems to be enjoying a forced march that would send most anybody else into a stupor. On the other hand, there's a dodged rhythm suggestive of a penitent's progress, in this homage to a woman's "thirty-five year's of service"--which is itself undercut by the self-serving tone that surfaces by the close of every speech. Clinton always revisits his own presidency; seemingly, he can't help himself.
Having written about Bill Clinton on the Texas stump twice, I have tried to avoid him since. Nevertheless, I find myself tripping over him as he criss-crosses the state. I don't want to be the blogger woman who stalks an ex-president of the United States; but I think it's important both to record what he's been saying down here and to discern his mind on what may be his last campaign trail.
Like everybody else in the Texas campaigns, Bill Clinton is working hard to the point of making small mistakes. This is the most striking thing about him now--the slips of the tongue. In the Houston Fiesta Mart parking lot Wednesday morning, for example, Clinton began with his usual comment about Obama stealing from the good people of Texas. "I have to tell you this--some people in the other campaign will think Hillary will win the votes in the daytime, and they'll come back at night and get the delegates. Are you gonna let that happen? Do you care enough about the future of America to vote twice? Okay, we're trying to make this a party. We want everybody to have a good time. We're gonna feed people--we're gonna have music. And so you need to tell everybody who says 'I can't be bothered to do this twice,'--say look, this is Texas, this is special."
It really will be . . . and I don't think special is the word--if the Clinton Campaign sends out food and entertainment to 874 caucuses in Harris County on Tuesday night. Surely, this is not what Bill Clinton meant to say. He was facing the Fiesta grocery, so food may have been on his mind. Also, Hillary's campaign had just fed the crowd free breakfast burritos and a dose of mariachi music. Therefore, three sentences in his speech jumped paragraph. I hope this is the explanation. Otherwise the Texas Democratic Party is going to have a lot more trouble on its hands with the caucuses than officialdom is already girding for.
Hillary supporters like Annise Parker, the Harris County Controller, have taken to introducing Bill Clinton as "The First Laddie." And there is a bit of the wee Scot about him, a shrewd merriment in his eye, when he takes the stage. But quickly every speech devolves into a recitation of the Hillary resume. Bill Clinton never seems to realize that this is not what Hillary's supporters have come to hear. He never adds a personal touch; he never profers a small detail about Hillary the woman--and although it would be the same little story in every speech in every town, each listener would feel that Bill had just shared a confidence. Not until I heard Henry Cisneros on the stump for Hillary a couple of times did I realize how odd Bill Clinton's Texas speech is in this respect. For Henry Cisneros and Bill Clinton talk about Hillary Clinton in exactly the same way. Even Ted Kennedy, who doesn't know Barack Obama that well, expresses more affection on the stump for Obama than Clinton does for his wife.
These observations are a roundabout way of driving to the heart of the matter, which is Bill Clinton's relationship to his audience, in each of his speeches, in each Texas town. Clinton has several versions of his assertion that Barack Obama thinks nothing good happened in the 1990's. This is one of the latest: "This campaign [Obama's] is essentially saying they want to get rid of history lessons in high school and college, because you don't need to know anything. Ignore the past. The only person who could possibly lead this country in a different direction is someone who never made anything good happen yesterday and never stopped anything bad from happening yesterday."
What's probative here is not the hyperbole or the falsification of Obama's various remarks about the Clinton years in the White House. From the long perspective of American presidential races, the negativity in 2008 has been nothing. Until the recent "phone call in the night" TV ad, it's barely reached the rancor level of tweener girls' backbiting. My family has a saying about mudslinging in politics: it doesn't get interesting until the desecration of graves. (In the 1844 Election, my three-greats grandmother had to dig up her husband and rebury him at a far remove from the road because folks, heeding Henry Clay, had been stopping by to spit on the grave and deface the tombstone--but that's a story for another day.) Therefore, it's not the misrepresentation itself that is revealing. It's the low measure of regard that Bill Clinton has for the individuals who have come out to hear him; it's the insult to their intelligence.
Bill Clinton would seem not to know these people at all, even though they are the very working class folk his wife and he believe they have spent their careers serving. Doesn't he understand that humble lives and lack of wit are not an equation? The average American has become an abstraction for Bill Clinton. Undoubtedly, this transformation has occurred over time so slowly that Clinton is unaware that he has lost touch.
Today under the Spanish moss-draped pines of Houston's Mason Park, the non-Texas press has finally caught up with Bill Clinton. The BBC is here. There's even a media guy from the HRC Campaign directing traffic. Several hundred Hillary supporters, at least half of whom have already voted, stick it out through intermittent rain to wait for Bill Clinton. "The Road to the White House goes through Mason Park!" Mario Gallegos says, before adding that it's muy importante to caucus. Even if every Hispanic in the East End votes and caucuses for Hillary Clinton it's not clear at this point how she returns to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Nevertheless, the Clinton Campaign is pushing hard for Texas. Not only is Bill Clinton here in Houston but also this time he's brought reinforcements: Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco and Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey--neither of whom, it's scarcely worth saying, will bring a single Texas vote to Hillary Clinton. This is the sort of disconnection between candidate and voter that has become a hallmark of the Clinton Campaign. Bill Clinton rushes through his speech--"we need a change maker for president"--"they will come back and take the delegates at night"--"she is the only candidate left who will provide health care to everybody"--"this country and a fascinating but troubled world coming together" will make a good presidency.
Once again Bill Clinton plays Barack Obama and, speaking for Obama, says, "I have not been involved in this before. I have not been involved in the struggle to make good things happen." Then Clinton switches back to his own voice. "The issue is whether you are in a position to make change." This bit demonstrates an important truth about the campaign trail, where speeches are not talking points but small plays, carefully crafted and performed over and over again in towns along the road, much like the religious plays in pre-Elizabethan English theater. But the Clintons--Hillary as well as Bill--have lost their histrionic flair. They have forgotten that the lifeblood of dramatic action is the interaction between actor and audience. For Bill Clinton, this loss--in perception of and connection to working people, and in political stagecraft--is indicative of a human bankruptcy on many levels.
Texas could be the end of the trail, and not just for the Democratic race, for Hillary's hopes and for Bill's days on the stump, but for the Democratic Party as we know it. Barack Obama is forging a different relationship with the voter--one that, like everything else, will have its end, but that for now is sparking what could become a new coalition. Since "to the victor go the spoils," likely Barack Obama will be able to take the name "Democratic Party" with him as he changes the face of American politics. At least, I think that's what is happening, although this, too, is a story for another day.