The Day Clinton Came to Town: Or the Interview That Never Was

Stuart Mitchner

How's this for the ultimate author's fantasy? His first book has gone right to the top of the best-seller lists, it's been sold to publishers all over the world, and when he goes to book-signing events people line up at dawn and wait half a day in brutal heat on dismal parking lot pavements just to have him sign their copies. And what about the signing at the Stockman residence in Hopewell on the same day, where people paid $500 for a signed copy and $1,000 for a photograph with him? Okay, he doesn't get to keep the big money. But it goes to a cause he believes in named Rush Holt.

The author in question is Bill Clinton, of course, and how does he look after almost four years out of office? As one observer at last week's Hopewell fund-raiser, I can tell you he looks great. Even his enemies might bite the bullet and admit as much. The man is swimming in charisma. It's his element. Some of the glow is simply reflecting the love coming to him from the partisan crowd. It's a rush. This is the champ, the smiling warrior. He's been through the valley of the shadow, suffered the slings and arrows and emerged with his head and his ratings high.

Clearly, he knows how sweet this is, to have come through it all, to have a book out, and still be in his prime. He looks better than he did in 1994 or 1998. His delivery is pure political genius, the same folksy, easygoing, but ever-on-target style he used at the Democratic Convention. If anything, he seems more fulfilled, more truly triumphant than he did after winning two elections. He's an author now, after all, and people everywhere are reading the story of his life.

What would really rile his enemies is that he's obviously happy, even cocky. He's smooth and down to earth at the same time. The Bill-haters would say "slick." He makes his points as if he were talking to a bunch of bikers in a bar but without in the least forcing it or speaking under the heads or high-brows of his well-heeled audience. He uses expressions like "That's nuts" or "It's nuts" or "flipped their lids," and speaking of the opposition, he springs a quote he claims to have borrowed from Chelsea: "Denial is not just a river in Egypt." One hand in his pocket, he's as cool and easygoing as an Arkansas Bing Crosby in a pale summer jacket, blue shirt, pale orange tie. It's actually a stump speech for Kerry but it doesn't sound like one, and he puts it over as if he were talking to an audience of undecideds.

You Are There

Here's how it was.

Before you can attend the event, you have to be cleared by the Secret Service. That done, you head for Carter Road. The directions provided by Rush Holt's people said it would be impossible to turn right into the Stockman estate. So it is. Traffic headed south is backed up as far as you can see but after a hasty U-turn, you sneak in up front, and when they find your name on the list, the voice of authority shouts, "This one's okay!" and you are allowed to drive down the one-lane blacktop to the field beyond the tents. Within an hour that field will resemble a condensed version of the grassy Fete parking lot in the days when that event used to be held on the playing fields off Washington Road.

Then you are wanded. If, like me, you haven't done much flying since 9/11, "wanded" may seem an amusingly fresh variation on "checked" or "inspected" or "searched." After being wanded, you can pretend you've been touched by magic as you trudge under the hot sun to the press tent.

Five minutes in the press tent and you've sweated through your shirt. The ladies and gentlemen of the press are sitting around a table resigning themselves to the fact that they will be stuck there with nothing much to do until 1:15 at best. It's only 10 a.m. Rush Holt's extremely attentive staff has informed you of the Secret Service mandate that no one can leave until after the President leaves. You are facing three and a half hours in a hot tent.

Just as you're wondering how or when you can get something to eat, angels of mercy from Main Street arrive bearing cold bottles of spring water and bag lunches containing turkey wraps and potato salad.

After lunch, you abandon the hot tent and walk alongside the field. You can see the country all around. It's actually a fine summer day out there. The birds are twittering, dragonflies and butterflies are flying about, skeeters are biting, Secret Service dogs are sniffing for bombs, and in the big tent near the house the $500 crowd is milling about, waiting for Bill and dining (no turkey wraps and potato salad, if you please) while a Dixieland band plays and you have fantasies about coaxing the man from Hope to sit in on tenor.

Half-expecting to be scolded and ordered back into the press area, you drift as unobtrusively as you can toward a folding chair under a great tree, an ancient cypress. This, you soon realize, is the best place to be next to being in the house, where the $1000 people are. Here are mild breezes and shade and a clear view of the drive. The president still hasn't arrived. As a black SUV drives up a pretty camerawoman sits down next to you and assures you it isn't Bill. "But he's due any minute. That's why I came over."

Sure enough, three state police cars soon come up the drive with a black car behind them, not a limo. Someone says "Only four. In the old days it would have been a dozen." That's him. And he's running late.

Rehearsing an Interview

You stay put. It's too nice to move. Others have begun to discover the spot. They say what you've been thinking. "This is the place to be." You find yourself conversing with a woman who turns out to be Nora Muchanic of Channel 6 Action News in Philadelphia. She tells you Clinton is said to have already signed 38,000 copies of his book, and when she hears you've read and reviewed it, she asks you what you think and you tell her some of the questions you would ask the author if you had the chance.

For instance, how does being reviewed compare with being covered (to put it mildly) while in office. And how does the sting of a nasty review compare with the sort of hostile fire he was subjected to even before Whitewater and Monica? Is he so battle-hardened that broadsides like the one launched by Michiko Kakutani in the Times are no big deal?

You'd ask him to reveal one or two passages he wishes he could have kept in the book. And did he discover anything about himself or his life that surprised him in the act of writing, insights that he'd either been unaware of or had never fully comprehended until he put pen to paper? Most political autobiographies are either ghosted or manufactured like a combination of political speech and glorified oral history recorded on tape and then patched together by a team of editorial aides for the "author" to scan.

You have to believe Bill Clinton felt proud and excited in the knowledge that he wrote this tome himself, thousands of pages of it, in longhand, and against a deadline with serious political and commercial ramifications. Think of it. By hand.

Finally, in your interview you would ask if he foresees writing another book, one that would develop the eye for character and nuance hinted at in My Life. What sort of a book would it be? A thriller like the ones he admitted a liking for in his speech at the Stockman's? Or a political page-turner with a sense of history alert to details like the fact that the Stockman house used to be an inn, with a railroad running through the back yard? Or would he dig deeper in the fertile ground of his early life?

Time to go over to the big tent. Twenty minutes later, there he is, author and President, a happy warrior wowing the crowd. If Bill Clinton continues to write as warmly and potently as he talks, he will always have a captive audience.