First-Day Flitters

A hint of things to come from the man who says of Clinton: "I'm still not sure there's a there there." (Our prediction: he'll nominate Gertrude Stein.) Plus political gossip heard over the din of clinking bar glasses.

by Peter Coyote

From: coyote@motherjones.com
To: mojowire@motherjones.com

If San Francisco has come to symbolize bohemian excess, and Manhattan a kind of gritty, in-your-face violence, Chi-cah-go -- as they say it out here with generous Midwestern vowels, symbolizes action.

The City is decked out for the big party that the Democratic National Convention is. Even the convention center looks like a big, tiered cake, lit as it is in red, white, and blue. The minivan driver from the airport, a sad-eyed, voluble Rodney King look-alike, informs me that "All the money has been spent where the folks can see it."

"How much was spent on the South Side?" I ask, feeding him his straight line, since the South Side, as any good blues aficionado knows, is the heartland of black culture, the "Sweet home Chicago" that Junior Parker sang about achingly.

"None", he answers, flat and hard as a backbeat and laughs and laughs. Later at my hotel I discover that the maps included in the "official" information pamphlets stop at 24th street. My driver told me that "the South Side they don't want you to see gets going around 35th."

It is after 11 a.m. when I arrive. People are talking everywhere, in twos and threes, with the kind of forehead-forward, scan-the-room-while listening intensity which is endemic to political life. Security guards are everywhere, uptight as Coldstream guards, but less glamorous in black pants and white shirts scoping the lobby for trouble.

I unpack and run downstairs to meet Martha Whetstone, the woman who got me into all this. Martha is a woman fueled by no known energy source who never forgets a name and laughs like a string of Chinese firecrackers going off. She's from Arkansas, an intimate of President Clinton's and "his person" in Northern California. She talks like a hick, thinks like a Keno dealer, and her sweet eyes have a sadness at the back of them that suggests that if the action ever stopped she might find herself at the edge of an abyss.

We've become friends since she tracked me by phone to a Paris apartment and ear-wrestled me to the ground; refusing all my protestations that I did not want to be a delegate; that my politics were too radical; that I was not sure that there was a THERE there when it came to President Clinton. I thrashed about like a fish on a line, while she reeled me in, having baited her hook with "access;" secret looks at the inside; policy discussions and old-fashioned notions of commitment and participation. By the time the conversation was over, Martha and I were buddies.

We meet in the bar to go over our impossible schedule: Every morning there is a delegate breakfast where we receive our credentials, without which we will be denied admittance to the convention floor. These are critical documents, and we are reminded in all print information to guard them and not to wear them until absolutely necessary because they cannot be replaced.

This morning there is an Arkansas brunch where Hillary is supposed to show; a Tom Hayden event where pal Bonnie Raitt is performing; Gore and the Israeli's at 4. Liz Carpenter (LBJ's ex-press secretary -- rumored to still be sensitive to the fact that LBJ's social achievements were overshadowed by his commitment to Vietnam) is throwing a bash from 6-8 p.m. and I'm going just on the long chance I can meet my journalistic hero, Mother Jones contributor Molly Ivins. After that there's a California Party at the Mercantile Exchange. After that is The Blue-Jeans Bash, "lots of major people'll be there." This is just SUNDAY.

In short order, Martha covers an equal number of events for every other day as well. I begin to realize that according to her schedule we would have to be cloned to appear at so many simultaneous events. When I point out to Martha that most of these events overlap, she informs me that we are to be about "Major flitting!"

At one point I asked her the question that has been haunting me for weeks. "What do we DO as delegates?"

Martha laughs, laughs again, and laughs some more. "You've been asking me that question since the first call," she says. "I've diverted your attention, skillfully I might add. You hang out, go to parties, you talk to an awful lot of people. At some point you may have to cast a vote or two, and look good for the television cameras."

"What do we vote on?", I ask.

"You just ratify the platform, and Clinton's nomination or something."

"I mean I don't have to get up and say something stupid like, 'From the Fabulous State of Wine Producing California...'"

Martha laughs again. "Hell no, honey. They'll be knocking each other over to get the microphone."

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