Former president Bill Clinton was in Beaver Falls yesterday to campaign for his wife, Hillary. (A shout out to the Beaver Falls Tiger Jazz Band which was fabulous entertaining the crowd before Clinton arrived.) I went to hear what he had to say as well as to see the 42nd President himself. Clinton gave a good speech, his usual, sans notes and speaking directly to the crowd. It was a typical Clinton speech, full of details showing a keen understanding of how things are connected. He covered the whole gamut of issues from Iraq to the economy. It was clear he and HRC realize that there is opportunity for the country to shift gears and become a leader in new manufacturing relating to reuse/recycling/new energy and many other facets coming from advances in science and medicine. I know NAFTA has garned a lot of discussion here at KP and Clinton made an interesting point, after saying he agrees with the things HRC wants to do to improve trade pacts. He pointed out that the trade agreements do have enforcement mechanisms, but the fact that our biggest trading partners (China, Japan, Korea and the oil countries) are also the ones lending us the money to help finance our economy means it’s not all that reasonable to expect a debtor to come down too hard on its lendors. It was a perspective I hadn’t really considered. I guess the bottom line is that if you liked the policies of the Clinton administration in the 90s, an HRC administration would be similar, but an “older and wiser” version.

There was no Obama bashing or anything like that, just what HRC would do if she is elected.

Now for the fun stuff… I got to talk to a few people in line. There was some obvious venom from a few toward the Obama campaign. I heard some concerns about race if Obama was the nominee, not necessary about his race, but about Americans living up to Gov Rendell’s comments. I reminded everyone I spoke to that the real issue is to get Bush and his ilk out of office because they have been a complete disaster, worse than Nixon, and done their best to wreck our country and that they are truly awful, bad, bad, bad people.

Vilsack, Ray Flynn and Jason Altmire accompanied Clinton.

The event was held in the BF gymnasium in the old HS (can’t bring myself to call it the middle school). The gym’s capacity is about 1200-1300 if it’s packed. The setting was arranged so that about half the gym floor was cordoned off (press, cameras, sound, etc, at the back and the podium at the other end in front of a curtained off “back stage” and open in the middle.) The organizers said Clinton likes to be surrounded by a crowd, so most of the crowd was directed to the floor in front of the podium, but half of the seats on the one side were filled. I’m guessing if everyone had been seated, the gym would have been or close to full. The crowd did well answering the questions Clinton threw out, but tripped a little on the BF quarterback question as to who broke Namath’s passing record. (It turned out the answer was Kevin Scanlon, a very good player in his day who obtained a football scholarship to the University of Arkansas and started for them at QB, making all SWC his senior year. He now lives and works as a sports agent in Little Rock, which of course meant the Clintons know him. Scanlon no longer holds the school all-time passing record.)

It was a fun evening and very cool to see a president right in the gym where I had phys ed class and where I’ve sat for many a basketball game.
Clinton looks great and like he’s having the time of his life.