This is as close as I could get to Bill Clinton.

Former US president Bill Clinton came to a Democratic rally at the VCU Commons court last Sunday to give a speech in support of Obama. Virginia being a swing state these days, there is a lot more campaigning going on than before the last election, and I have to admit there is a selling point to in-person campaigning. Being used to everything in the world of politics happening pretty much on televesion I have seen and been a part of the overwhelming feeling of distance and irrelevance to politics among the young and the not-so-wealthy. Politics on TV is show-entertainment, popularity contest made epic, and with world order implications that we know of mostly from Comedy Central.

Now when somebody like former president himself comes to your university, stands right where you normally try to quickly munch some lunch on a windy day between classes, how can one not feel like all of a sudden your life is politically important and your vote is needed and all that. You see a political figure as a man of normal proportions and with physical limbs that he uses to shake hands and to point when he says something particularly crowd-pleasing.
The "humble" factor, the grass roots aesthetics will get you if the rhetoric doesn't. A party rally is a rock concert without music, and the crowd leaves with a sense of involvement. Is that sense an illusion, or the real thing which ends up moving social change one way or the other...?

Well... I may be cautious about the PR in politics, but what choice do I have? These things I know matter:

1. Universal healthcare (and oh, come on, have no fear of socialism, there is plenty of capitalist purists in this country who are in power to never let that happen)
2. Environmentally safe energy sources (besides what that would do for foreign affairs, it would mean employment and oh, yeah maybe safer second-hand cars in the third world where people live in such polution that young green-mided yuppies that are active because they buy from companies here that are good at selling Green Design look but not at cutting down even simple things like paper waste... can't even bloody imagine! And let's not deplete the soil, either... that's like a full circle to the Grapes of Wrath.
   
3. Negotiations. America is hated all around the world. And that is not because we're better than everybody and they are just all jealous. What are we, a country of prom queens? Oh wait, I forgot... hockey moms... ok.

Well... I guess it's clear whom I'm voting for.