My 30-second brush with greatness

Well, we’re just two days away from the Super Bowl of the 2016 presidential election — the first debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

I don’t think it will really matter whether either candidate’s boat rises or falls with the tide of public opinion come Tuesday morning, and this race is too insane to try and guess the final outcome in November, but at least this will be the first presidential debate since the 1990s to feature a candidate I have met in person.

Of course, if you were an Arkansan in the 1980s you met Governor Bill Clinton.

But Hillary was not as omnipresent as I seem to remember Bill being back when I was the editor at the Dumas Clarion over in Desha County.

My boss and publisher in Dumas was south Arkansas matriarch and journalism saint Charlotte Schexnayder, and she taught me the meaning of “yellow dawg Democrat” back when I was a fledgling journalist just a year out of college.

Besides being highly active in the Arkansas Press Association, she was also a member of Arkansas Press Women and the National Federation of Press Women — in fact, she’s in the NFPW Hall of Fame.

Charlotte was elected to the Arkansas House of Representatives and pioneered roles for women in Arkansas and nationally.

In fact, she was a state representative while I was working for her, and she was often on hand to help Gov. Clinton with whatever he needed from the Legislature.

Likewise, the governor reciprocated by visiting southeast Arkansas frequently, and he often stopped by the office when he was in town.

However, I don’t recall ever seeing Hillary in Dumas or anywhere in southern Arkansas. I am sure she was through Dumas or McGehee at some point, probably campaigning for Bill, but I don’t remember ever seeing her compete in the watermelon seed spitting contest during Ding Dong Days, or eating raccoon at the Gillett Coon Supper — both major political events (or at least what passes for major political events in that part of the state).

In fact, the only time I ever remember seeing Hillary in person was during an open house at the Governor’s mansion in Little Rock, a few years before I moved to Dumas and while I was still a college student.

For some reason, I was in Little Rock with two of my best friends from college, Tommy and Kate Jacques, and we decided to visit the governor’s mansion one weekend during an open house.

I seem to remember it being a holiday open house, and Bill and Hillary were there greeting visitors.

I don’t remember really having much of an impression from my 30 seconds of basking in the glory of Hillary — I just remember my friend Kate, who grew up in North Little Rock, saying “Hiya, Bill! Where’s the food?” Then we were off to the buffet table like locusts.

The main thing I remember about that whole evening (besides Tommy and Kate eating a prodigious amount of food) was Bill’s aide — a young woman, blonde and strikingly beautiful, standing close to Bill’s side. She reminded me of Brigitte Nielsen, and I remember thinking “it must be rough being governor.”

Maybe my skewed memory is just proof that I am a male chauvinist pig (no argument forthcoming), or maybe it’s telling that instead of remembering meeting the state’s first lady for the first time my brush with Hillary left a blank space in my memory, like meeting a chameleon or a Jedi master.

I was living in West Virginia in 1992 when Bill was running for president, and people would ask what I thought of him as governor.

“He’s running for president because everyone in Arkansas knows him and wouldn’t elect him dog catcher,” I would answer, only half joking.

If I were asked the same question today about Hillary, I wouldn’t be able to answer so readily.

To me, she always seemed an outsider, the rich Yankee girl who was sentenced to live in Hooterville with her yokel husband.

If you watched the CNN “The Essential Hillary Clinton” on Labor Day, the documentary talked about her work in Arkansas, and while commendable, it came across to me as also being somewhat condescending, which is probably the main attribute I would ascribe to Hillary.

Hillary’s demeanor has never been described as “warm and fuzzy,” and that continues to plague her even now as she struggles to make herself seem more presidential than Donald Trump.

Let’s face it, most tree stumps are more presidential than Trump, and Hillary is having trouble even meeting the “tree stump” standard.

I don’t know what Hillary would have to do to overcome her personality shortcomings, real or imagined, but she has less than 48 hours to come up with something.

Meanwhile, in my book, “none of the above” remains the best candidate not invited to Monday’s debate.