Bill Clinton finds his place in the Texas sun sunlight

HOW HE SEES IT

Bill Clinton finds his place in the Texas sun sunlight

By WILLIAM McKENZIE

Dallas Morning News

TYLER, Texas — Say what you will about Bill Clinton’s marital indiscretions, he’s still the most impressive, oversized political figure of the last 40 years. Watching him work a crowd here, he clearly remains both Bubba and Yale.

Very few politicians can establish an emotional bond with everyday working people while holding forth for 45 minutes about the details — and I mean details — of his wife’s policy proposals.

Those gifts also can wear you out, and that’s Hillary Clinton’s problem. Listening to our 42nd president rattle on at Tyler Junior College — holding a mike, wagging that finger, biting those lips, hanging that jaw — he reminded me of the neighbor who comes on Christmas Eve and stays way past bedtime. Everyone else wants to go to sleep, and he’s just getting warmed up. I’d guess about a third of the standing-room-only audience left before he finished talking. As they departed, others filed in the back door to see him. It was like watching a hockey team change lines during a power play.

All the while, Clinton kept talking, often brilliantly. As he told his East Texas audience, he wasn’t there to oppose anyone, which was another one of those Clinton confessions. He wanted to make clear that he had learned his lesson and wasn’t going after Barack Obama anymore.

Sales trip

Instead, Clinton was there to make the sale for his wife.

Listening to some of the voters I interviewed before he arrived an hour late, East Texans were eager to hear that very sales pitch. Some of them even lean Republican but were open to Hillary.

Among them was Donna Lazzani, who works in East Texas’ oil and gas industry. She told me later that she thought Clinton hurt his wife’s chances.

Hillary Clinton “fits the bill,” she said, but she was surprised that Bill Clinton pushed her closer to John McCain. “The thought of him back there bothered me,” she said, recalling the Clinton years at the White House.

That’s the oversized part of him, which, frankly, is never going away. I’m not talking about the cheating on his wife, but his love of the limelight. It’s hard to imagine a Bill Clinton so disciplined that he doesn’t revel in the glory. It would be like asking Jerry Lee Lewis to stop pounding the keys with all 10 fingers and his feet, too.

Of course, the most immediate task for Hillary Clinton is winning Democratic primary voters, including those in Texas, on March 4.

From the people I talked to and the crowd’s enthusiasm, she has plenty of core supporters. Obama is making a big swing through Texas this week. But this idea that the Obama phenomenon is inevitable doesn’t ring true in this part of East Texas.

Sealing the deal

Margaret Wood, a Tyler woman on Social Security, told me that Bill Clinton did seal the deal for her Friday. She will vote for Mrs. Clinton, who is more knowledgeable about how Washington works and who can do the job on health care. Wood said she likes Obama’s charismatic speaking style, but fears he’s too much of a dreamer.

Upper East Texas is an important region for Hillary Clinton. There’s a natural connection between Arkansas and Texarkana, Longview, Lufkin and Tyler, the Texas towns Bill Clinton visited Friday. He even won several upper East Texas counties against Texans George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot in 1992.

This part of East Texas is southern in its history and culture, much like the lower half of Arkansas. Obama could have a harder job here — not because he’s black, but because he’s more urban and cosmopolitan. That’s probably why Clinton reminded the rural East Texans that his wife had started a successful loan program for rural Arkansans when she was the state’s first lady.

Hillary Clinton has another reason to play off this advantage. She will need strong East Texas support to offset the risk she faces in our big urban areas. Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston-Galveston and Austin-San Antonio are more of a jump ball.

For all these reasons, it made sense to send Bill Clinton to the stump in East Texas. But he will always be a risk. You can’t ask a born performer to stop performing, even when he overshadows his wife.

X William McKenzie is an editorial columnist for The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.