A nostalgia party for Clinton gang

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — “You haven’t changed a bit!” Kirk Hanlin, an advance man for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, told Stanley Greenberg, the campaign’s pollster, as they stood in an airy room at the Clinton Library here on Friday. “Well, maybe your hair. I kept looking for the hair, for the afro, for the mustache.”

Scores of former Clinton aides descended on downtown Little Rock last weekend to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his announcing his candidacy. It was a “Don’t Stop Thinking About Yesterday” bash amid pervasive Democratic anxiety about President Obama’s electoral future.

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Members of the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign reminisce at the 20th anniversary of Bill Clinton's announcement to run for president in Little Rock, Ark.

The class of ’92 cast its reunion as a tacit — and sometimes not so tacit — rebuke of the current president and his un-Clintonian aversion to the political fray. Some erstwhile Clinton aides wore “I Miss Bill” T-shirts and “It’s Still About the [Expletive] Economy, Stupid” buttons. Others privately regretted Hillary Rodham Clinton’s acceptance of the secretary of state post — the theory being that she would be better positioned to replace Obama if she had stayed in the Senate.

For the Clinton faithful, the escape from Obama reality amounted to a therapeutic retreat. “It’s like going to get a shot to make you feel better,” said Clinton loyalist Vernon Jordan, who suggested that the weekend’s good memories could help boost ailing Democrats and have a “positive effect on the Obama campaign.”

Clinton himself — when he wasn’t touting his accomplishments or proposing strategies for winning the upcoming election — expressed understanding of the current president’s plight. “When they do the comparisons, they are comparing him now to me in my last year in office,” Clinton said in a brief interview. “This is really him now to me in ’95. In ’95, Time magazine had a cover of me and I was about two inches tall, called ‘the incredible shrinking president.’ ” The bottom line, he said, was that Obama was on “an upward trajectory.”

So, for a fleeting 48 hours, were Clinton’s former staffers.

“It started on the plane ride down,” John Podesta, Clinton’s former chief of staff, said. “It was like a campaign charter!” chimed in Bob Barnett, Clinton’s former counsel.

The top campaign brass spilled out of the plane with Clinton, but some of the junior staffers from ’92, now in middle age, hung back.

“I used to answer the phones at the campaign!” Ashley Merryman, 43, told a befuddled-looking Greenberg. She explained that she had gone on to become the best-selling co-author of a child-rearing book called “NurtureShock.”

Hanlin, 51, boasted about taking the call in which George H.W. Bush conceded the election. “My hand was shaking!” he said.

“Hey, Kirk,” said Richard Strauss, 42, the campaign’s radio director, peering at one of the event’s exhibits. “Check it out. There’s a radio credential here. I made that!” Hanlin pointed at a picture of Clinton in sunglasses, blasting the saxophone on “The Arsenio Hall Show.” “I said, ‘You got to put them on,’ ” Hanlin recalled, pointing at the shades. “I told him, ‘It’s all about the demographics.’ ”