Lately there have been a lot of people pissed of at Bill Clinton for one reason or another. Some think they have good reason. Some think attacking Bill Clinton is good politics. I have a hard time believing that most people really believe what they are saying. Not deep down. At least I hope not.
But people have different experiences than I have had…and many are much younger than me…and hardly anyone else here lived in Arkansas when I did…and most of those probably didn’t meet Bill and/or Hillary as many times as I did…and I’m completely certain that none of the people who did those other things began gender reassignment during the Clinton campaign in 1992.
My vision of the era is tinted by the fact that I came out to the world, beginning my transition in September of 1992, precisely because I persuaded myself that Bill Clinton was going to win the election, that Bill and Hillary were going to be in the White House and I could do so with a lessened fear of being fired from my job, thrown out of my house and/or murdered.
Of course, I lived in Arkansas so I had a different viewpoint than a lot of folks…people who were not standing in the freezing rain at the Capitol Building in Little Rock singing along to “Yesterday’s Gone” and crying in joy about newfound freedom to be oneself. I made one of my first public appearances as the new me as one of the crowd on election night.
Bill Clinton was the Barack Obama/John Edwards of that instant in time. He was hope for a better future. He was…and is…a hero to many people.
Not everything was right with Bill Clinton. He was an educated Bubba, but still a Bubba, as we used to say. That is not meant to demean anyone from the South. I lived in either Arkansas or neighboring Missouri for major portions of my adult life. My daughter was born in Joplin. I was arrested by the FBI in for draft dodging in northeast Oklahoma. I was in the army in Georgia and then Kansas. There are good people in all of those states. We thought being a Bubba meant having a certain outlook on the world…and was not a matter of where one was born or lived. A lot of them were good people. Maybe most of them. But their way of thinking was not ours.
So he was not my pick before the primaries. I preferred the other Rhodes scholar, Bill Bradley. But I never get to vote for my preference in a primary and that was true in 1992 as it has been every year since 1968. Except in 1996. I guess he won me over that year.
I wrote a letter to Hillary Clinton after I came out, asking her, if she wouldn’t mind, to lend a hand if it became necessary for me to defend my right to be a college mathematics professor while transitioning. I don’t know if she ever got it. There was this campaign going on. But I didn’t get fired. Board memberships at state colleges were appointed by the governor at that time, as I was given to understand. For what it’s worth.
Anyway, I’m rambling. This was really supposed to be a story about hopes and expectations. And about how sometimes we invest those hopes for ourselves in the successes of other people. Sometimes the people looked at are celebrities from the media or sports…if there is any difference between the two. Rarely are our heroes from what for want of a better group word might be called the intelligentsia (in the Russian sense). In some respects, choosing between politicians may be the closest we come to that…which is kind of sad in a way.
When we choose a candidate, we invest hope in them. Hope for a Better Future. By the very nature of that, what each of us sees as a different Better Future. We are different people. We have different pasts. We are on different life paths. And those paths intersect at this place and time. The paths didn’t come from the same direction and they don’t lead onward into the same direction.
At this point in time the chatter is great. I’ll be 60 years old in 75 days. There have been other such times. People want this election to propel themselves along the path they see themselves on. To much of the time, we ignore those whose hopes will be dashed, whose dreams will die, maybe just for now, but maybe for the rest of their lives. Or a substantial portion of it.
Whether it is a “just for now” or “for the rest of their lives” sort of thing may very well depend on the experience people have when those hopes fade away. Heroes are heroes. When you belittle someone’s hero, you steal some of the hopes and expectations of the people who believe in them…some of their Better Future.
For what purpose? A few votes? Is it necessary? Or do you do it just for fun?
Is there time to think about those among us whose hero will not be chosen? For some among us, tomorrow probably seems gone. It’s not a bad thing to remember that.
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…doesn’t generate the exact sort of behavior that has saddened me. My have a non-zero expectation that it will fail to be universally received with the spirit in which it was written.
Robyn
… was the best President I’d seen in my lifetime.
So many folks were lifted out of poverty during his Presidency. He was a genius at changing the tax law so that while everyone prospered, the poor also were lifted up, something we see now and during the Reagan era, doesn’t just “happen” due to trickle-down.
The family leave act alone was astonishing — I know so many folks who would have lost their jobs if it weren’t for that law. Millions have benefited from it.
But most of all, he actually understood what America was about and knew how to talk to us, and treated us all as though we were actually intelligent instead of constantly bullshitting us on the facts.
After 12 years of Reagan and Bush, I was really excited by Clinton’s election. So excited that I recorded Clinton and Gore in Arkansas celebrating their victory election night and the inauguration the following January.
At the time, it wasn’t so much who Clinton/Gore were for me, but rather who they weren’t. They were not Reagan, Bush, or Quayle. They were a change and the Clinton years were some of the best and happiest years of my life.
This year, I’m hoping for a change and a break from the past too. In their own way, each of the three Democratic front runners offer a change and a break from the past, some more than others. Each candidate would bring a better future than more Republican rule.
I’m hopeful the Democrats can win the election this year, but I was just as hopeful in 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000, and 2004 too.
to justify my own life for me I just need him or her to do the job and do it well.
While Clinton may have made things easier for some he also gave away billions of dollars of Blue Collar work to foreign interests not to mention NAFTA. Then he enabled the Republicans to label all Democrats as sleazebags and liars for years.
So… hero? I dunno.
I, too, love Bill’s presidency. As to NAFTA, even Paul Krugman was for it, before he was against it. It hasn’t been followed too carefully, and the economic problems we’re facing have more to do with capitalist corruption and incompetence. GM didn’t make good cars–at any price. Add to that, the rape of the treasury by Bushie–an expensive needless war not paid for–low interest rates by Greenspan–tax cuts for the rich–etc.
Back to Bill–he was saddled by Newt’s congress–remember the budget showdown. If he was our president while LBJ was Senate pro tem, we would have had real good CHANGE.
Too many liberals condemn Clinton because of media bias. They didn’t just run with Monica, they ran with orders from the republicans on everything. They beatified Reagan and belittled Carter so much that many, especially our younger posters, believe some of it. Those old enough to have lived through these times understand this. If I were 30, I might believe Ronnie R was a saint also–that’s now how it’s taught in schools. Obviously, Obama also thinks St Ronnie was an agent for popular change.
have feet of clay. They are projections of people dreams, perhaps we should elect a president who doesn’t promise to fulfill our personal desires, one who doesn’t offer us that which will maybe better for our personal gain, our American Dream but in a time like this offer a vision much needed of a different path then the politics of what’s in it for me.
Fear and hatred culturally keep us at the mercy the wolves in sheep’s clothing. Heroes offer no change except slight degrees of progress and keep the power entrenched by offering us that which they cannot deliver, but hey they will feel are pain if were lucky. Politics of heroes are politics of delusion. We need our system of checks and balances back not a hero. The Law is king not any individual.
You asked in a comment above: Try reading for a deeper meaning here. Please?
I don’t know about anyone else, but this is pretty close to what I read in your essay…
Keith Olbermann, July 03, 2007
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…here. I forgot.
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…is brand new, entitled Meeting Place.
Thank you for this. First for the deep quiet of your thoughts. I just came from Dailykos and it feels like being in a noisy room full of anger. I have been reading a lot of candidate diaries there and began my own descent into anger, rage, frustration and intolerance. So thanks for providing a space to cool down and center. Also thank you for reminding us why there is so much commitment to the Clintons now. I started being politically aware in the late 80s. I was a teenager in college when I voted for Dukakis over Leonora Fulani (no she has radically changed). Clinton was the first (and only) President I have voted for that won. He was like a great breath of fresh air. Going on Arsenio Hall, MTV and his sincere comfort around African Americans (a rare quality among American Presidents), felt very new and invigorating. So I was impressed. As his presidency rolled on and the Republicans became more obsessively mad about him, and his policies were not as liberating as I thought they could be I became a little more cynical. I was paying more attention to the underside of the “fabulous” 90s. My 90s were concerned with 100,000 more cops on the streets, and FBI tapping of telecom lines, and poor women kicked off of public assistance, into low wage work without childcare or domestic support. By the time of the 2000 Election debacle I was ambivalent about voting, this government and participation in the system. Now as a supporter of Obama (don’t worry this is not a candidate’s comment) and a public official, I have that early Clinton feeling again. But this time my guy is really my generation. Post Boomer without the historical baggage and the entitled attitude. I do look at the Clintons though and they seem something different, something faded chronologically and spiritually. Thank you for articulating what it is that encourages each generation to invest so much in its Presidents. Hope that that leader can help us realize who we believe ourselves to be.