Dear Friend and Reader:
Bill Clinton, the unexpected loose cannon of the democratic primaries, gave his speech at the DNC last night to a hysterically applauding crowd, showing that the well-worn saying “absence makes the heart grow fonder” is only magnified after eight years on the dark side, with the Bush administration.
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And it wasn’t the fact that his speech was more of a mouthful than it should have been, particularly when Barack is trying to court Hillary’s blue-collar supporters (can most of you say, honestly, that you’d cheer naturally after someone says, “Our position in the world has been weakened by too much unilateralism and too little cooperation?” Be honest, now…)
It wasn’t the natural fallout after Hillary’s clear humility and well-presented speech the night before, making it a difficult speaking engagement to follow, even for a former-president.
And, to be fair, it wasn’t even his blatant frustration trying to get the cheering crowd to shut up so he could do his speech.
It was the fact that this campaign is riding on a concept that Nancy Pelosi so blandly presented as “a vision of the future that is free of the constraints of the past.”
Yes, the past. We’re to wave bye-bye to the floating garbage dump of history, and hello to our Obama-driven, Captain Planet-type future. So why, exactly, did the crowd go so wild for Bill, our specter of the past? Did they know why they were cheering, or were they just wrapped up in the mob mentality? If the following quote is any indication, I’m going to suggest the latter:
Together, we prevailed in a campaign in which the Republicans said I was too young and too inexperienced to be Commander-in-Chief. Sound familiar? It didn’t work in 1992, because we were on the right side of history. And it won’t work in 2008, because Barack Obama is on the right side of history.
His life is a 21st Century incarnation of the American Dream. His achievements are proof of our continuing progress toward the “more perfect union” of our founders’ dreams. The values of freedom and equal opportunity which have given him his historic chance will drive him as president to give all Americans, regardless of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation or disability, their chance to build a decent life, and to show our humanity, as well as our strength, to the world.
Hmmm…everyone will have the “chance to build a decent life.” This is coming from the Defense of Marriage Act guy, right? Mr. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?
The comparison Bill Clinton made between himself and Barack Obama can be agonizing to listen to when you have this in mind. He actually set up barriers against equality for same-sex couples during his terms as president. But, at the same time, we should recognize (and I’m going to try and row in here too) that pre-2000 was a different time: a time before countries truly starting legislating in favor of gay partnerships, before 9/11, before ipods, for godssake. And that was the time for NAFTA, for restricting the purchases of handguns (where the Supreme Court has just ruled in the opposite direction), for guaranteeing the right to medical leave for pregnant women — and that’s just from 1993.
So, perhaps we’re all products of our times: in a world I like to think of as becoming increasingly more liberal, there is more room for an open, equality-seeking presidential candidate like Barack Obama. Maybe the crowd was cheering for Bill Clinton last night as a recognition of our past, of the foundation that we built in 1992, and of the bits of steel, brick and glass that we’ll use to build our future, a 21st century future with the Clintons, respectfully, in the shadows and a new era in the spotlight.
