The meaning of the victory, if it comes, remains a question. There is, in fact, an odd dissonance between the low-key sobriety of the candidate, the skeptical boredom of the press-nothing much is happening out there-and the wild displays of emotion, especially among young people, that often greet Clinton in the streets. There are screamers, shriekers and jumpers now; they react with a fervor that hasn’t been seen in American politics since the Kennedy days (Ronald Reagan was better loved, perhaps-but that was Lawrence Welk music; this is Elvis). “I love Bill. I love him,” said Mary Spence, the otherwise sane young wife of a Marine who waited for hours-with thousands of other formerly laid-back southern Californians–outside a packed Orange County rally at the Pacific Amphitheater last week, hoping for a glimpse of the candidate. “He represents youth. I’m tired of those old guys. This is the first time I’m excited to vote.”
The size and emotion of crowds are notoriously lousy indicators of anything in politics. For most Americans, Bill Clinton remains unknown and untested, a young fellow who talks a little too smooth and has fancy hair-in short, a typical politician (especially to those who find Ross Perot’s snake-oil salesmanship compelling). No doubt, more than a few Clinton voters aren’t exactly overwhelmed by their choice, either. But there is something else happening as well this year, a palpable hunger for a more meaningful public discourse, a yearning to be inspired and led. This was evident early on in the New Hampshire primary, resurfaced in the original Perot movement, and then again in the crowds that lined the rural highways during the early Clinton-Gore bus tours; and now, more emotionally, in the vast throngs gathering for the final Clinton rallies. “It’s gotten pretty intense this past week,” the candidate himself allowed, chatting with reporters late one night last week. “There are times when I’ve had to grab children to keep them from getting hurt.”
His reaction to the outpouring is curious, subdued, almost reticent. His speeches remain uninspired and superficial, as they have been throughout the general election campaign; he skates the surface of his crowds’ emotions, exciting them at times, but never really moving them-almost as if he didn’t want to touch them too deeply, to raise their expectations too much. Part of it is caution, of course; now is not the time for taking chances. But Clinton also appears a bit daunted by the power of their needs, knowing-as he must-how difficult it would be to deliver anything resembling the sort of governmental catharsis Perot blithely promises. Moreover, he seems to sense even that won’t be enough this time: the public wants something therapeutic from its next leader. The fellow with the ponytail who asked the question in the second debate, casting the public as “needy” and “symbolic children” of the next president, came close to putting the yearning into words. His “needs”-the needs of several generations swaddled in affluence, risk-averse and terrified by the uncertainty of life in a changing, atomized world-seem well beyond the reach of polities.
Such undercurrents beggar the talk of “mandates” that has kept political analysts chattering these last few weeks. No politician will be able to restore that other, simpler America, where Dad worked a manufacturing job that paid good money and Mom stayed home with the kids; no politician can re-create the imagined security of childhood. Bill Clinton could-and probably should-be more specific about his plans. He should make clear what is possible and what isn’t. But legislation may be tangential to the real work of the next presidency-which will be to re-create some sense of American community, to address the yearning, the loneliness, the intense desire to be protected that troubles much of the nation this year. Clinton glides toward his moment of truth, sensing perhaps that these may be his last few days of freedom, that he is about to become a prisoner of the people.
