Ever see Bush work a "rope line"? Remember when we had a president who did?

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/simon-showtime.html

Show Time

<snip>When he is done, the people roar, some waving their beer bottles at him, and the band starts up with Michael Bolton now singing "Georgia on My Mind," which apparently is as close as they can come to Arkansas. Clinton waves from the lectern and then slowly walks to the side of the stage and down the stairs. A Secret Service detail flanks him as he moves up to the rope line, which is stretched along the front row of the crowd. After every speech, no matter how late, no matter if it is blazing sun or pouring rain, Bill Clinton works the rope line. The rope line is what he lives for.

Sometimes it is a real rope stretched between stanchions. More often it is interlocked pieces of fencing with vertical bars, called bicycle stands by the advance staff, which are low enough for people to easily see over but too high to hurdle easily. Sometimes, at outdoor barbecues or picnic events, the rope line is made up of hay bales. The Secret Service would like at least fifteen feet between the crowd and the president during his speeches (though they are often argued down to ten), but the distance becomes immaterial when Clinton works the rope line. Here is where he reaches out into the crowd, touching and being touched. Here is where he forges his link to the people.

Speeches are fine, but people can see the speeches on C-SPAN. What you cannot get on C-SPAN (or on the Internet or in the newspapers or on radio) is the rope line. You can get that only by showing up at the event. Ironically, TV helped create the rope line. For most of American history, voters saw their presidents from afar, if at all. Unless you were in the front rows of a political rally, the president was but a speck on the stage. (In the only existing photograph of Lincoln at Gettysburg, Lincoln is a tiny blob, recognizable only because of his tall stovepipe hat.) But TV changed this. TV gave us not just the picture but the close-up picture. And the close-up brought the president to us in an extremely intimate way. We could examine every pore on his face, see every twitch of his mouth, every tick of his eyelid, every welling of a tear. The close-up was so powerful it created a hoed. We felt we knew the president "up close and personal." And now when Americans went out to see him in the flesh, they wanted to see him as closely as they saw him on TV. They wanted to touch him and be touched back. And Bill Clinton loved to oblige.

His campaign days lasted as long as they did (often more than twelve hours) in no small measure because of the time he spent slowly and methodically working the rope line. It was not uncommon for Clinton's rope line time to last longer than his speech. "It's the only campaign I've ever been on where the candidate goes home after the crowd," Doug Sosnik, the White House political director, said. It was literally true. Working the rope line constantly made Clinton late, but he did not care. Late for what? The rope line was the campaign to him.

Clinton's favorite rope line technique scared the hell out of the Secret Service. He loved to reach both arms forward, spread out his fingers, rise up on his toes, and thrust his hands into the second, third, or fourth row of the crowd so people back there could touch him, too. It was an extremely vulnerable thing to do. When he spread his arms, it opened up his body. The Secret Service could only watch in horror. "The Secret Service does not decide what he can do," Jim Loftus, one of Clinton's advance men, told me. "He decides what he can do." People would clutch at his hands, his arms, his shoulder. They would immobilize him. They did not want to let go. In Chicago he had to slip off his wedding band and put it in his pocket because all the grasping hands made it tear into his flesh. And after working the rope line, Clinton would climb back in the limousine, take out a can of an antibacterial foam, and lather the stuff on his hands to kill the germs he might very well have picked up after touching hundreds of hands.

Read down further to this paragraph and read the next 5 or 6 paragraphs:

On October 24, 1996, the ultimate rope line event occurred...

[titoresque]

1. I went to a John Edwards rally

right before the election and took my daughter and my 16 year old sister. He grabbed my sisters hand and in her words "held it for a minute and looked right into my eyes" then she squealed and said she wasnt going to wash her hand for awhile. She was smitten! I said ohhhhh geez, he could be your father! She didnt care......."He is sooooooo hot!"

Yeah Edwards knew how to work the rope!

LOL! :)

[never_get_over_it]

3. I invited two unconvinced voters to attend a John Edwards rally

in Cocoa FL - we got separated and they got much closer than I did and got to shake his hand - well I'll tell you that convinced at least one of the two (the female) to vote for Kerry/Edwards - of course being in FL we'll never know if our Kerry/Edwards vote was counted for them or for Bush/Cheney

Anyway your sister is exactly right John Edwards is hot hot hot - he made a comment about drug commercials about take a pill and then go skipping through a field with your spouse and then he got a big fat smile on his face - way too cute

It was a great night - fabulous weather - crowd of like minded people I'm really gald I went but pretty pissed that the folks I "forced" to go got to shake his hand and I didn't - lol - oh well....

[Inland]

2. Even today, Clinton walks into crowds

in the US and, I hear, in Africa.

I shook Clinton's hand. He was at Daley Plaza in Chicago surrounded by, oh, five hundred windows and maybe twenty thousand people, that could fit into the square.

I positioned myself at a rope where I thought he would go by, and sure enough, he did.

I then ran back to my office figuring that the Clinton magic would rub off and there would be a dozen messages from new clients. They weren't, and I've hated Clinton ever since. NO, I love the big lug, faults and all.

[NNN0LHI]

5. I've read other articles about how he would drive the Secret Service nuts

They would be waiting in traffic looking out the window and look over and see that the limo door would be open and Clinton would be walking down the street just shaking peoples hands and shooting the shit with them. I can't imagine Bush doing that.

Don

[Inland]

6. I can't imagine Bush doing it because his rule is premised on fear.

Fear is what gives him all his excuses, including the reason for ticketed republican only "town meetings."

Would Bush actually do the plunge into the crowd thing if it weren't inconsistent with a major theme of his presidency? I don't know. Maybe a Texan or someone familiar with the 2000 election could tell us if he just hates commoners.

[cmd]

4. Edwards was terrific

The Secret Service had to hang on to his belt to keep him from falling into the crowd.

[sinkingfeeling]

7. Bill still walks down the streets of Fayetteville, AR. just like he did

when he was President. He drove the SS nuts in his first term, when he returned to watch the Razorbacks play a basketball game. Sat in stands just like anybody else, next to my city council man. Then wandered down Dickson Street, talking with everyone he saw. He's also gone into the local AQ Chicken House and had dinner. I went to the Springdale airport to see him, Hillary, and Chelsea and all they did was take a quick look into my purse and handed me a bottle of water. When they got off Air Force .5 (small enough to land in Arkansas!), they all spent about an hour and a half shaking hands, hugging those they actually knew, and even signing autographs. I got to shake hands and speak to both Bill & Hill!

Bill was in town just last week to attend a memorial service for one of UA's law professors.