In 2003, some of us lived in Cleveland, Ohio and excitedly woke up bright and early one day to hop on the Green Line from Tower City and head over to Shaker Square, where Joseph Beth Bookstores still was, so we could get a place in line to see Hillary Clinton and have her autograph her book for us.  We thought, being so early, that we’d be one of the first in line.

We were something like #300.  People had been camped out since 6am to see Clinton, and to urge her to run for president.

In the line, we remember hearing person after person insisting the Clintons were the best thing to ever happen to this country, and how much everyone missed them.  “Hillary’s the one who really ran things the first time, and she can run it again under her own name,” we remember a gigantic man saying.  There were black people, Asians, old people, gays (which is, historical note, where two of us actually met, in line at a Hillary Clinton book signing, where a friendship was born), Jews, you name it.

There were even Republicans in line, who said things like, “You know, I don’t know why some people hate her so much.  Now that she’s a Senator, I have no problem with her, but I didn’t like when she was not elected to anything but acted like she was”.

We remember the line wrapping around and around through all the departments in the store…past big racks of puppets and children’s books, through the religious sections, past the history section with end-caps of all sorts of presidential books.

Finally, we got up to Clinton at the table.  It was the first time we had seen her in person since she left the White House. Huma was behind her, along with some very young Secret Service guys.  We remember wondering how much they like this assignment, and recalled that back in the 80s the SS always said Jackie Kennedy was the best gig to have, since she went to the Russian Tea Room and other fun and interesting places.  We imagined being on Evergreen’s detail would be fascinating…since no former First Lady had ever become a Senator, and one on a nationwide book tour to boot.

We heard the people in line in front of us say to her, over and over, “You need to run for president next year, Hillary.  We need you.  You need to defeat Bush”.

And she, like always, demurred, smiled, and thanked them for saying nice things.

When it was our turn, we told Senator Clinton if she ever ran for president we would do everything we could to help her…we would give every cent, quit our jobs, and go to as many states as we could.  We told her we believed in her and hoped she’d run…and we looked forward to one day being able to cast a ballot and vote for HILLARY CLINTON.

She smiled, and did that big eyed thing she does that the media makes fun of, and said thank you, looking us right in the eyes, and said — we’ll never forget — “Who knows if I might take you up on that someday”.

The next time we saw Clinton in person, it was at her 60th birthday party, right before the launch of her campaign.  We’d wished she ran in 2004, because we think she would have succeeded where Kerry failed.  But, she seemed skittish of running so close to her own time in the White House as FLOTUS, and also didn’t want to be criticized for not completing even a single term as Senator.

In truth, that WAS her first elected office.  Dr. Utopia, while not completing a term in the Senate, was in elected office for years before he ran for the presidency.

Clinton played it safe, after living under a constant barrage of criticism for 20+ years, and waited until 2008.

And we all, maddeningly, know how that turned out.

Oh, but you should have seen how fired up Cleveland was when Hillary Clinton came to town.  People drove up from as far away as Mineral City, Dayton, Columbus, Cincinnati.

Great Merciful Zeus, we love this woman.  We will go all-in, nonstop, 24/7 for her again in a heartbeat if she ever ran for anything again.

So, as Sarah Palin sets out on her own book tour, we can’t help thinking back to that 2003 signing with Clinton in Cleveland…before there was a presidential campaign, before any of us here had any national campaign experience.  Some of us had worked for Stephanie Tubbs Jones’ campaigns, or helped with small local races where family friends were running for Councilman, but we had no idea what a presidential campaign would be like.

Clearly, Sarah Palin does.

Harper Collins is releasing her book tour and she’s skipping the major cities where the most crazy Leftists live, who Palin’s never going to convert.  Instead, she’s hitting cities she knows people will flock to see her in.  As much as we want Palin to come to Chicago, it would be an expensive and strategically lacking stop…she is much, much more well-served by hitting Ft. Wayne, Jacksonville, small cities in PA, Rochester, NY, etc.

Skip the big cities where Liberals rule.

Go to the places where moderates and Independents hold sway.

Keep that base fired up…don’t alienate the moderates and Independents…and, honestly, do not for one moment try to convert any Liberals because that’s a losing battle.

Palin won’t win Cook County and Chicago.  She won’t win New York City.  She won’t win Los Angeles.  So she shouldn’t go there.

We also think she shouldn’t make the mistake of waiting too long to run…2012 is her year. She can’t wait until 2016…and it sure feels like she knows that.

If it was only about money and attention, then she WOULD be going to New York and Chicago and LA.  If Palin wanted to be very, very, very rich she could supplant Ann Coulter as the Republican Dems most love to hate, and could and would appear wherever she would generate the most controversy and be hated in public by the most crazy people…which would be guaranteed to make news.

She is not doing that.  She is not on the road to seek attention.

She is running for President.

 

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