Bill Clinton made an appearance to stump for votes for his wife, Hillary, in advance of Indiana's primary today.
Those of you who have read my profile know that I don't favor either party particularly. However, I always vote, and in the primary, I always vote in the Democratic. That is because Lake County, where I live, is so heavily Democratic that the primary is the only chance I have to vote for local officials. The Democratic primary is the de facto general election locally. The fact that I always vote in their primary means that the local Democrats think I'm one of them.
It also means I get to vote for Hillary or Barack Obama, the Senator from Next Door, so I thought it might be useful to hear what Bill had to say. I also thought it would be a good chance for my older boys (11 and 9) to see a former President and get a taste of the process.
But first, we had to hurry up and wait.
The doors to the little banquet hall that Clinton would be speaking at opened at 2:45. We were not told when Bill would actually speak, but we were prepared for a long wait.
We showed up right at 2:45 and had to wait in a little bit of a line to get in. Security was not as tight as I would have expected for a former President. Bags were checked, but that's about it. In fact, I went through a more thorough security check to get into the arenas for the NCAA tournament.
For the occasion, in honor of Hillary's drinking habits, I wore my most obnoxious Boilermakers shirt.
The place was standing room only, but not because it was overly crowded. There were no chairs, so all we could do was stand. The room was a little less than half full, maybe about 200 folks. It was almost all adults too. My kids were the only grade school age children there. There were a couple of babies and toddlers, and a few HS kids as well. There were also a few media types, and seemingly every Schererville cop. It would have been a good day to rob a bank.
I was about 40 feet from the podium, which meant I could see OK, but it would have been better if I'd worn heels. My kids had trouble seeing, but they could find an angle on occasion.
Clinton started around 3:30, so it was only a 45-minute wait. Bill has a reputation for being a charismatic speaker, and he did not disappoint. He was concise, by his standards, funny, and at times blunt. And his style wasn't typical of most politicians. Politicians generally speak as if they are talking to idiots. In many cases, they are. They'll pause. After. Every. Word. As if you need a few minutes to process each one. I can't stand that. Bill spoke like he had somewhere else to go (which he did), even though he went on for 40 minutes.
He was giving us some of the main points of Hillary's platform (jobs, energy, health care, education, balance the budget, get out of Iraq, etc), the details of which I'll leave out here. You can get that in other places.
His speech didn't end until ten minutes after the doors opened at his next stop in Crown Point. Those folks undoubtedly had a longer wait than we did.
Even though he was campaigning for his wife ("I'm just here as a volunteer campaign worker."), I expected to see more presidential stuff. Perhaps this is against protocol - I certainly wouldn't know - but I thought the presidential seal would be on the podium, but it wasn't. He does have security, though. I saw four Secret Service guys total. There was one on each side of the stage when he spoke, and two others joined the party when Clinton shook hands afterwards.
My sons and I got close enough to shake his hand, so we did. He and I actually chatted a few seconds about No Child Left Behind, which I think is useless and which he said Hillary wants to do away with.
And then he was gone, off to Crown Point.
One strange thing about this event was that there was no handouts, which is a sign, I suppose, of how cash-strapped Hillary's campaign is. There were no buttons, stickers, pins or signs given away. They did have a place to sign up to help, but as you can see, they weren't getting much interest.
They did give us a black-and-white flier on the way out, but I wasn't sure what we were supposed to do with it. It wasn't any different than the one I received in the mail earlier that week.
Bill and Hillary hit this region hard. We hardly saw Obama in NW Indiana, but the Clintons were here at least once a week. We'll see today if that pays off.
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