Sitting Grandpa and watching the marvelous movie, Primary Colors, based on the novel by Joe Klein. I've noshed on it off and on today. The movie is funny -- hilarious! -- and sad and tragic and politically astute and true. It's West Wing in hyperdrive -- on cocaine, I'd say, except I've never done cocaine, but I can guess. Travolta and Emma Thompson are marvelous as "Jack and Susan Stanton" who are too good at impressions to be mistaken for anyone but Bill and Hillary. I am in awe of Emma's rendering of the Chicago suburbese of Hillary. Other than having legs Hillary would die for, Emma out-Hillaries Hillary. Billy Bob Thornton as the fictional James Carville is good, funny, outrageous. His character asks a foxy young woman if she wants to "walk the snake" and unzips his pants and waves the lily in a room filled with campaign workers. "What do you think?" he asks. The girl says, "I've never seen one so -- old." When Henry, the African-American reprimands him for this egregious behavior, he says, "I'm blacker than you are. I got some slave in me, I can feel it." Everybody, pretty much, is from the South. Henry, played by Adrian Lester, remains incredulous throughout of the antics of the "Stantons" and their coterie. I've not seen him in anything else but he is a first-rate actor. Stanton-Clinton is outrageous as a womanizer and a teller of anything people want to hear. BUT he has the makings of a hell of a president -- a good and decent man on balance and smart as a whip and truly caring about the common people. With all his faults. And lies. Sure! But a hell of a president! Instead of the president from hell who succeeded him.
I recall when the real Bill Clinton and Al Gore -- "Huck and Tom," some of us called them back then -- made a bus tour of much of the nation in 1992. Bill and Al are the only men who have won the oval office (Al won it in 2000, right?) with whom I've ever shaken hands. The kiddies and wife and I drove to Butler State Park, Carrollton. I don't remember the details but I know that my cousin Martha and a grandchild or two of hers were along too. When I shook Bill's hand I said "Give 'em hell, Billy!"
After that visit, which reminded me of the whistlestop, give-'em-hell campaign that Harry Truman made in 1948 from the presidential train, I began to have hope that a populist president -- capital P -- President, by God! -- would at last be back in the Oval Office after a long spell of rich imperialists. We got a decent president for a while. We will have a decent one again. Until then, God help us to oppose the one who is ravaging this nation now.
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I referred to my children as "the kiddies" when we met Bill, Al, Hillary, and Tipper (?) that humid afternoon in 1992. Actually, the twins were going on 21 and the Bebe was 15. Seems I recall Firstborn was there -- ? -- and she told Hillary, "I wish you were the one running," or words to that effect, and Hillary was pleased. And now the old girl is, with all her powers, running. Was my accomplished daughter of whom I am so proud a prophet or what? Could I be right about that?
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