As a pack rat — friends call me a hoarder — I found myself rifling through a drawer of old campaign memorabilia. Among the detritus was a vintage 1992 t-shirt printed for staff and press slogging along on Governor Bill Clinton’s plane. The shirt foretold how, 24 years later, our current campaign will end.
The front was a U.S. map with ten stars on it, identifying the cities that Clinton’s 727 “Express One” charter touched down during the campaign’s final 29 hours. The back noted that the sleepless journey spanned 4,106 miles, including two stops in Texas, one in McAllen, the other in Fort Worth.
It wasn’t the first time in 1992 that Bill Clinton and Al Gore invaded George Bush’s space. In late August, in the middle of a bus tour through the Lone Star State, the Democratic ticket arrived with their wives in Waco, where it was my job set up and prepare the rally site in advance of the campaign. We erected a stage in Doris D. Miller Park, along the east bank of the Brazos River, and had the Clintons and Gores stride into town across the Waco Suspension Bridge that forms part of the Chisholm Trail. That bridge might be part of our path to victory, we schemed.
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Read the rest of my piece on the end of the long, strange trip of Campaign 2016 in The Dallas Morning News…
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