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"And one more thing..." Goodbye Already!By Rick Horowitz
SOMEDAY SOON FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL -- And people say politics is boring! Not these past few days: For campaign junkies and psychology majors alike, the week since the Democrats first convened in Los Angeles to nominate Al Gore has offered a spectacle worthy of Shakespeare -- or maybe the Ringling Bros. There's been enough high drama to meet even the Bard's lofty standards. But just as often, it's been clowns squirting seltzer at one another. The pundits, of course, will claim they saw it coming, and perhaps they did. Certainly the signs were there right from the beginning. There was President Clinton, for instance, on the convention's opening night, ending his "farewell" address to the party faithful with the admonition, "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow!" Most observers took the comment as simply one last reprise of an old campaign theme song. Only a very few suspected, even after a weekend of high-profile fundraising and nonstop speechmaking, that the lyric could be read another way entirely, that the departing president still had a few tricks up his sleeve. When "tomorrow" came -- the following day's symbolic "passing of the torch" from Clinton to Gore in Michigan -- it was Clinton himself, reports indicate, who suggested that the event could be improved if the two men used an actual torch. That the particular torch Clinton had in mind was the Olympic torch, then wending its way to Sydney, Australia, seemed to bother him not a bit. "So let's wait until it's available," he apparently told the Gore camp. "What's the rush?" He relented only when the vice president's people made it clear that their man had no intention of waiting a minute longer than necessary to take the party's reins and make his way to California to claim his nomination. "I can take a hint," said Clinton. All of which made the president's sudden reappearance the following night a particular surprise; not even the sharpest of prognosticators expected to see him walk out on stage right in the middle of Sen. Joe Lieberman's acceptance speech. Claiming he'd accidentally left a copy of his own remarks on the podium, Clinton basked in the cheers of the delegates for a good ten minutes before ceding the spotlight to the party's new vice-presidential nominee. Said Lieberman to CNN's Larry King later that evening, "The president's behavior was not only wrong, it was impolite." Still, the Gore-Lieberman team thought -- or more accurately, hoped -- that they'd seen the last of Clinton for a while. They hadn't figured on the balloon drop. Has a sitting president ever been part of a convention's final-night balloon drop? As one of the balloons? The answer -- now, at least -- is, "Yes." Few who saw it will ever forget the sight of Clinton suddenly plunging from the rafters and nearly squashing his chosen successor; only quick action by Gore's security team averted a political crisis of the first magnitude. The vice president and a nearly hysterical Tipper Gore were hustled out of the Staples Center by furious convention planners, while the president worked the crowd and quickly raised a five-million-dollar memorial fund for the flattened officers. So after these repeated shocks during the convention itself, was anyone really surprised when the president, supposedly on vacation in upstate New York, "happened" to run into Gore and Lieberman during their post-convention stops in Pennsylvania and Ohio? When the president and Mrs. Clinton rented a bus and invited the Gores to join them on another trip? When the Clintons sublet a house in Nashville, just minutes from Gore headquarters? And was it surprise -- or pity -- the country felt only yesterday, when the president handcuffed himself to Air Force One and swallowed the key? Posted 8/15/00. There's
a surprise every time here at "Rick's" -- come back soon!
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Rick Horowitz