TIME PASSING BY CLINTON GENERATION

The cute girl in the YouTube video has a crush on Obama.

I know how she feels. I've had a crush on Bill Clinton.

I already know all the reasons why this is stupid.

In fact, I saw one of those reasons standing in line, waiting to get
into the Stock Pavilion on the UW-Madison campus.

It was one of our former interns at the newspaper. She 's young and
beautiful and smart. And I know how the old cad is with those young
interns. So I jumped in line to protect her.

Sitting there, in the old barn still redolent with the hay and
animals that star in Stock Pavilion events, we scanned the crowd as we waited.

Who got to sit in those reserved seats behind Clinton? They were the
political version of the cool kid table in the high school lunchroom.
She recognized UW-Madison student and superdelegate Awais Khaleel. As
the rest filed in, I filled her in.

That's Joe Wineke, he used be a state senator, now he 's head of the
Democratic Party. The bald guy? Tom Loftus, he used to be ambassador
to Norway.

The woman firing up the crowd? Hannah Rosenthal, she used to be and
that 'sher husband, Rick Phelps, he once was And then it hit me. I
was talking about a time when she was in grade school. Finally,
Clinton took the stage. I nudged her.

He's cute, isn't he?

She was diplomatic: He's a very nice-looking older man.

Sigh. Clinton didn't seem bothered by the fact that Barack Obama
outdrew him nearly 10-to-1 at the jam-packed Kohl Center two days before.

Clinton delivered his valentine to Hillary, telling the students that
his wife started changing the world back when she was their age and a
Yale law student. He talked about how America's status had gone to
the dogs since he left office.

He talked and he talked, for over an hour.

By contrast, the Obama event had been quick-boom-bang. There was the
cool celebrity video by the Black Eyed Peas on the big screen, a
quick introduction by Gov. Jim Doyle, and a trademark Obama speech,
short on details, long on inspiration.

He talked about the young crowd, not to them: It's your time, seize the moment.

Remember 1992, when the Clintons were the cool young people?

Back when they played Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop " and other songs
of our generation.

Out on the sidewalk was someone else who remembered.

It was another graying Madison icon, marijuana activist Ben Masel,
who was sandwiched by Secret Service guys in their sharp suits. Masel
was holding up a sign that said, "Where's Jacki's medicine? "

The way Masel tells it, Jacki Rickert, who suffers from a painful
connective tissue disorder, met Clinton on his 1992 bus trip through
Wisconsin, and asked him to legalize marijuana for medical use.
Clinton told her, in his husky drawl, I feel your pain.

But when he got into office, the president who didn't inhale didn't
legalize medical marijuana. Jacki didn't get her medicine. The rest
of us who voted for him didn't get our health-care reform. How will
the future play out for today's Obama girls?

I do know this: After two hours on the cold concrete steps of the
Stock Pavilion, I felt my own pain.

Where's my medicine?