Coming Soon To You--the New Euphoria

Who could have predicted back in the fall of ‘92? Bill Clinton had just squeaked through in the popular vote, all that talk of “change” was widely dismissed as about as sin cere as a used-car salesman’s handshake, Bob Dole already making sour faces. David McCullough later pinned the exact moment when the country knew as 10:30 a.m., Dec. 4, 1992, when Air Force 1 landed at Davenport Municipal. The Obermeyer family had called President Clinton about their busted combine--and 12 hours later, there he was, with his tool kit and overalls and John Deere cap, crawling around under that thing.

Time’s special issue on The New Euphoria cited a flurry of omens. Amtrak reports its best on-time record ever. Cal Tech seismologists revise their earthquake forecasts downward. The pharmaceutical industry tracks the nosedive in Prozac sales back to the very day Clinton has his chinwag with Bush in the White House.

People changed--like Sinatra, volunteering to sing at the Inauguration Ball. Institutions changed. Clinton and the head of the NRA throwing that crate of handguns into the Potomac. On “Geraldo,” gays and Nazis shaking hands and exchanging phone numbers.

Hell, pets changed. Millie, refusing to go to Houston, adopting Chelsea, standing in for Al Gore at state funerals so Al and Tipper can spend more quality time with the kids. Like Public Enemy’s hit rap song put it, “A great concantonation all across the ------------ nation.”

The reservoir levels all over the Northeast started rising, even with rainfall way down. In mid-1992, the favorite American car color was black; in mid-1993, it was canary yellow. Science weighs in with proof beyond dispute: Ring-around-the-collar is suddenly kaput as a wash-day threat. Oprah takes off 30 pounds--and it stays off; AT&T; stops running anti-MCI TV spots, and MCI and Sprint both stop taunting AT&T.;

People out in Shaker Heights stop even being surprised to see Bill and Hillary up on stepladders, cleaning out the soffits, no charge, no press. Buckley and Buchanan run those editorials telling Dole to stop being obstructive, to get with the program. Kissinger says he’d do about what Clinton’s doing in foreign policy, then goes off to work with Mother Theresa.

In Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s felicitous term, it was like a great psychic corn-popper of spontaneous, combustive change all across the nation. People had voted for change, of course; they prayed for it, but nobody except Bill Clinton had any idea of the extent, the depth.

Coming up on “Unsolved Mysteries”--that Kansas windmill, rusted and immobile for 55 years, suddenly started turning again. On Inauguration Day, 1993. Brrrrrr.