A Park, Picnic and a Clinton Speech

First came a parade of local politicians. Under a hot summer sun, the crowd applauded politely. This was the local Democratic roster--not Bill Clinton.

Next came a troupe of Mexican folk dancers. They twirled gracefully through the heat, spirals of purple and orange and yellow twisting rhythmically across the stage. The several thousand people gathered Saturday at Kimball Park in National City gave up impatient applause, antsy for the main act.

But not yet. Next up was a blue-suited mariachi band. Their brass horns rang out across the park. Two little boys, each in a white shirt and pink shorts, threw a ball across a baseball diamond behind the stage. The crowd chanted, “We want Bill.” The mariachi bandleader called for him, too: “Guillermo Clinton. Our next one.”

Instead, the crowd got Henry Cisneros, the former mayor of San Antonio, Texas. Then came Barbara Boxer, the Marin County congresswoman running for the U.S. Senate. Finally, an hour after the rally began, Bill Clinton took the microphone, clutching a bouquet of flowers, wearing a baseball cap--and a tie. The crowd whooped and hollered. Finally.

Clinton beamed, waved his cap at the crowd--and gave it what it had come to hear, old-fashioned politicking under a tree in a park at a community picnic.

President Bush, Clinton said, was interested primarily in power for its own sake. “I think the American people are tired of being told why we can’t do something,” he said. “They need to know how we can do something.”

Clinton sharply criticized recent comments by Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle that they would support a family member who chose to have an abortion. “They’re pro-choice for their families but they want a constitutional amendment for everybody else to ban abortion,” Clinton said. “Another double standard.”

Clinton also took aim at Bush’s recent statement that he should be reelected because he “wanted” the presidency. “If (the Republicans) wanted to do something with it as bad as they want it, I’d give it to them,” Clinton said. “But they don’t.”

Clinton went on for 15 minutes. But he spent more time working the crowd after the speech than he did speaking. Someone even climbed up into the crook of a eucalyptus tree, about 15 feet off the ground. Clinton waved a friendly hello.

And the crowd lapped up the whole thing, another summer day on the stump. “He’s a people person,” said Kelly Molina, 26, of National City. “I’m with him.

“We’ve been hearing it for 12 years from the Republicans,” Molina said as Clinton made his way to a waiting car. “But we don’t see it happen. Lots of talk. Lots of talk. And no action. This guy,” she said, referring to the departing Democratic nominee, “he’s going to make things happen.”