Clinton Camp Celebrates the Power of ‘Hope’

It caught the eye, a little hand-lettered sign waving slowly in the cool air in front of the gloriously-columned Old State House, where all the men and boys, women and girls who had dreamed and yearned for this night were packed together, shivering in delight.

It was a play on the little town where Bill Clinton spent his first years--and a statement of what had kept his campaign together more than a few times when logic seemed to dictate defeat.

“Hope,” it said, “wins.”

The sheer delight of the tattered sign was reflected all over Little Rock Tuesday night, in the faces of 50,000 partisans who jammed the streets in one riotous party, and especially in the face of one William Jefferson Clinton, 46 years old and newly in possession of his lifetime dream.

Clinton took to the podium at the Old State House, in the same place where he had stood a year and a month ago to announce his candidacy for President. And all the hard edges and nerves and worry of the last long months seemed to vanish.

“On this day, with high hopes and brave hearts, in massive numbers, the American people have voted to make a new beginning,” he declared. “This election is a clarion call for our country to face the challenges of the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the next century.”

The roar that went up was manifold: the pride of a little state in its native boy; the joy of Democrats who had spent 16 years working for a day like this, their efforts unrequited until now.

Bill Clinton seemed to hear as well the echoes of the millions he has seen along the roadways of this campaign, from his perch in buses ambling through small towns, from the fancy stages in big city rallies, from the one-on-one sessions with the people who broke through their reserve to pour out their hearts.

“You can trust us to wake up every day remembering the people we saw on the bus trips, the people we saw in town meetings, the people we touched at the rallies, the people who had never voted before, the people who hadn’t voted in 20 years, the people who had never voted for a Democrat, the people who had given up hope.”

His voice cracked slightly, the only time it did so on all of Tuesday night.

“All of them together are saying, ‘We want our future back.’ And I intend to help give it to you.”

Clinton is often accused of wanting everyone to love him. On Tuesday night, he could have been excused for thinking they did. Fifty-thousand people crowded into downtown Little Rock, turning the normally placid river side city into a keen mix of bedlam and human gridlock.

The trees were decked out in red, white and blue lights; bunting was laid across nearly every flat surface and everyone seemed to be in a defiant, joyful mood.

In the crowd were movie stars and business leaders, just folks from across Arkansas and bigwigs from the Democratic Party. The high and mighty and the no-name workaholics of the Clinton campaign stood next to each other near the stage, their fists raised in triumph.

James Carville, the rambunctious Louisianan who had led Clinton’s campaign to the finish, stood next to Mandy Grunwald, the public-relations wizard who came up with some of the candidate’s best lines. Each has been through election night before, each knows the feeling of triumph or dismay, and yet there they stood together, a look of dumbfounded glee slapped across their faces.

There was no such look from Clinton; he adopted a statesman’s mien throughout his speech, calling on Democrats and Republicans and independents to gather together to build a “new community” to rebuild America.

“I remind you again tonight, my fellow Americans, that this victory was more than a victory of party,” he said.

“It was a victory for all the people who work hard and play by the rules, a victory for the people who feel left out and left behind but want to do better.

“A victory for the people who want to compete and win in the global economy, but who need a government that offers a hand-up not a hand-out.

“That is what we offer and that is what, tomorrow, we will begin to work to provide to all of you.”

For Clinton, the day was one of high emotion--and going through the motions, waiting for the news he was confident would come.

He cast his own ballot shortly before noon, walking into his customary polling place near the Governor’s Mansion to hugs and handshakes from fellow voters.

While waiting for his turn in the booth, Clinton restlessly wandered the room, talking to well-wishers, kissing his daughter and conversing with his wife Hillary.

“Its an overwhelming feeling,” he said about voting for himself.

The last hours of Clinton’s campaign presaged the dominance of his victory. Everywhere he went on his final, sleepless, 29-hour campaign swing, thousands of people gathered to wrap him in an emotional embrace.

In Albuquerque, the governor’s plane taxied toward an airport terminal at 3 a.m. to find thousands who had waited for more than two hours in 40-degree cold to hear him talk.

Three hours later, Clinton arrived in Denver for the final formal rally of his long campaign, and, for the first time, suggested his election was inevitable: He heaped praise on Rep. Patricia Schroeder for her support of “family values,” adding “and now she’ll have a real advocate in the White House.”

Then, with the final podium thumping all but done, emotions began to loosen.

The governor kept it all in until about 11 a.m., when he stepped from his plane here to the relieved chant of “No more days” from several hundred campaign workers gathered outside the terminal.

Clinton walked off the plane with his wife and daughter and into the embrace of senior members of his campaign.

Tears formed in Clinton’s eyes. “Yesterday I stood in Philadelphia, in the cradle of American democracy,” he said. “And today I ended in my own cradle, home where I belong.”

But not for long.