[size=4]Why does anti-establishment Berkeley love Clinton?[/size=4]
by Monica Friedlander, Monday, February 11, 2002
AS HE walked up to the microphone, screams of "We love you" echoed from the back of the hall. When he was done, hordes of 18-year-olds ran up and down endless flights of stairs to elude security guards and sneak into the gym through the back door. There, students stepped on each others' toes to touch him, nearly knocking down the very inconspicuous California governor trailing closely behind.
Then, Clinton proceeded to shake every hand and thank every well-wisher, even take the time to shoot a few baskets. Back outside, he plunged one more time into the adoring crowd, grasping every stretched-out hand until his own were raw.
This spectacle may have resembled a rock concert, but it was in fact a political event: a visit to UC Berkeley by former President Bill Clinton. Most of the students who crowded the Zellerbach Hall -- many of whom had camped overnight for tickets a week earlier -- are too young to have ever voted for Clinton. But most would undoubtedly do so in a heartbeat if given the chance.
The fact that a political figure can still elicit such enthusiasm in an era of political apathy is unusual enough. What's truly shocking, however, is that in the notoriously anti-establishment Mecca of Berkeley, a mainstream Democrat like Bill Clinton would receive a veritable hero's welcome.
Asked why the right wing despises him so, the former president answered simply, "Because I won."
This was not the theme of Clinton's speech, but these three words are the ones that will be remembered, for they said as much about this country as did President Bush's State of the Union address that very same day.
And therein lies Clinton's true threat to the far right, for which he was subjected to the most relentless campaign of character assassination in American history: his undeniable star quality.
If left unsmeared, this personal magnetism could have turned the Republican strategy on its head for decades to come. And no one understood that strategy better than Clinton himself.
"They thought they found a foolproof formula to turn us into cardboard cutouts -- superficial, one-dimensional, non-American figures. And the American people voted for me. They never thought it was legitimate. They decided 'We should have never lost the White House. It belongs to us.' If you want to be a Democrat or progressive and run for national office today, you have to have a pretty high pain threshold. It's just the cost of doing business in politics today."
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