Up close and (im)Personal with Bill Clinton

On the front page of today's Washington Post is a story about how former president Bill Clinton is about to release his autobiography, which will no doubt trigger a wave of "reminiscence and argument" about the charismatic Democratic president.

On that note, here are two memories I have of The Comeback Kid:

Memory 1: When Clinton ran for the last time as Arkansas governor in the early 1990's,he took a whistlestop campaign tour of the state. I was in college and wrote for the campus newspaper, and when he rolled through Fayetteville, I had to cover him. I remember not being terribly excited about this story, thinking it was a bit pedestrian - a regular photo opp and grip and grin event.

It was a sunny day, and a small group of local media and city folk met him at the picturesque train station on Dickson Street, a block from the university. I sidled in close and took photos of him as he stood on the platform of the train car and gave his stump speech. He seemed young and full of energy, confidence and goodwill. I asked him a question or two - I can't remember what they were - and he seemed gracious and thoughtful.

Then the train whistled, his cue to move on, and he smiled and waved as the smallish crowd clapped sporadically and waved back. The train chugged slowly away, but he kept waving until the train rounded the bend and vanished from sight.

I went back to the newsroom and wrote my story. We used one of the photos I took in the paper. Of course being the world-weary punk that I was, I threw the photos away, and didn't keep a hard copy of my story. Damn.

Memory 2: Fast-forward to a crisp fall day in 1995. I had just moved to Washington to become a media relations intern for a health care advocacy group. There were about five interns at this organization, which is headquartered in downtown Washington. That day we were walking back to the office after lunch when traffic suddenly stopped.

We stood at the corner of New York Avenue and 14th St., NW, only two blocks from the White House, as a small motorcade with lights flashing and big black Town car slowly passed in front of us. We looked inside the car and there was Pres. Clinton, waving and grinning. All of us but one gasped and smiled and waved back, pointing, and exclaiming, "That's the president!"

Now, why I was star-struck then and was not as a cub reporter shows you how the press, even those wet behind the ears, can look at subjects with a gimlet eye. Not that we don't have good reason to.

The one intern who didn't jump up and down like a giggly schoolgirl, a native Washingtonian who grew up in Georgetown, smiled a faint, tolerant smile and said, "The first time you see him, it's kind of cool. But you'll see him many, many times when you live here."

Note: Just a couple of months later, Clinton began his liaison with another intern, Monica Lewinsky. That bitch.