Love Fest

The dude directing cars in the parking lot is barefoot.

A shoeless, long-haired attendant is a welcome sight in a place where one would expect cops and Secret Service agents. The scene could happen only in Lawrence: Hundreds of people standing in the merciless sun outside Allen Fieldhouse on May 21 are there to see a president, but that hasn’t affected their couture: cargo shorts, T-shirts, boob-enhancing stretchy tanks, belly-blubbing low-rise jeans, flip-flops.

Inside, the storied basketball court is covered by soft, blue carpet and folding chairs. Having secured spots in the bleachers, some students worry about others. “There’s kids in finals right now who have tickets,” one says, as if he’s waiting for a rock concert.

Instead, it’s the first annual Robert J. Dole lecture, put on by the former senator’s still-young Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas. “Each spring,” the program explains, “on or about the date of Senator Dole’s wounding in Italy during the Second World War, the Institute will bring a prominent figure to campus to address some aspect of politics or diplomacy.”

That’s a little morbid, but it’s also sort of endearing. At a moment when the country’s prospects for true democracy seem hopeless, Dole’s effort to engage the sweaty masses in public-policy issues seems downright noble. Besides, he’s kicking things off with a thriller.

The un-airconditioned fieldhouse gradually fills with 12,000 sweaty people, but these aren’t just Clinton groupies. They stand and gush with applause when Governor Kathleen Sebelius walks in, luminous in her light-blue pantsuit. What kind of governor ever gets this kind of response? One who blows a kiss in return.

Then Dole and Clinton, two late-’90s sex symbols, walk in grinning like they’ve just been rolling around in a tanning bed together. The fieldhouse erupts, the air spattering with camera flashes. “Four more years!” somebody shouts. Girls shriek when Clinton waves.

What’s surprising, though, is what happens after the Dole Institute’s director, Stephen McAllister, explains during his introduction of Dole that the senator’s political institute “is dedicated to finding bipartisan solutions to America’s problems.” This gets massive applause, too. As it turns out, the citizens of Lawrence aren’t hot just for Clinton. They’re actually excited about the Dole Institute’s lofty civic ideals.

“It’s always a pleasure to come to Lawrence,” Dole says, “a fine university where I get more compliments — and fewer votes — than anywhere in Kansas.” This earns laughter and applause. The venue, he says, reminds him of how many great Jayhawk teams have made it to the national championships “only to fall short — much like my 1996 campaign.” More laughs.

Reinforcing the mission of his institute, Dole notes that there was a time in Washington when political disagreements didn’t get in the way of friendships. That, he says, “brings us to the political odd couple you see before you.” He adds that he’s threatening to run against Clinton again, for president of the Senate spouse’s club. Maybe then he’ll be president of something.

By contrast, Clinton tells one joke to polite applause and another to complete silence. He proceeds to take his assignment — to deliver a lecture — seriously.

Clinton’s theme is that the country’s founding fathers understood their eternal mission to form a more perfect union. Not a perfect union, since perfection is unattainable, but a more perfect one, one that by definition would always be a work in progress. People form unions, Clinton says, when they need something from each other, and he gives a few examples of how this works in the world and how it causes conflicts. He brags subtly about the successes of his own administration and tiptoes around his disagreements with George W. Bush. As he lays out a five-point strategy for forming this union, his talk grows brambly with digressions — the war on terror, globalization and poverty, attempted jokes, AIDS, the 1992 elections, 9/11, categorical thinking, KU versus Arkansas, the war in Iraq, the human genome project. It takes a lot of concentration to stay with him.

Clinton’s most salient point comes in an aside, after he suggests that the war on terror might be going better had it been contained to Afghanistan rather than spreading to Iraq. When people applaud, Clinton stops them. “This is thinkin’ time, not cheerin’ time,” he admonishes.

Everyone furiously airs themselves with handheld Jayhawk fans left over from some state fair, and a few people exchange pained glances as the Professor plows forward. His basic message: We oughta quit demonizing people with whom we disagree.

“His speech was somewhat indistinct,” one spectator will say afterward as the audience shuffles out into the cooling hot breeze.

True, but it was also a healthy dose of intellectualism out in the big fieldhouse on the prairie. OK, so Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Dole cancel out each other’s votes in the Senate. And the Bill-and-Bob act feels a little disingenuous for anyone who remembers the ’90s not as an era of collegial bipartisan collaboration but as a time when hostilities festered until the country split, dividing so intensely that it couldn’t even elect a president by the end of the decade.

Nonetheless, and regardless of his politics, by the end of the afternoon it’s obvious that Dole has done something profound at KU. How many college kids get to hand in their blue books, walk over to the gym and listen to a former president give a free lecture?

Clinton works the metal barricades in front of the stage, reaching for hands in a crush of people. A girl in a slinky black dress and teased-up hair shamelessly throws her arms around his neck. Bruce Springsteen’s utopian “The Rising” is blasting all around him.

For a moment, though, Bob Dole stands forgotten on the other end of the stage. Then a couple of handlers come up and escort him down to the floor where he, too, starts shaking hands. Sadly, though, it’s obvious that the people are waiting for Clinton, not him. Next year, maybe Bob Dole oughta give the Bob Dole lecture.