Bill Clinton told me that when he was 14, he shook John Kennedy's hand, and that inspired him to be president.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Many people remember that spirit that President Kennedy summoned forth. Many people look to me as somebody who embodies that sense of possibility.
In the time it takes to heat a TV dinner, Clinton had convinced me that he was the smartest person in the room and that I was the center of his attention. In the next 25 years, I would see countless others fall just as quickly to the Clinton Touch.
The first time I met Bill Clinton was actually 1988.
Former President Bill Clinton, who is widely regarded as a political mastermind, may have sounded like a traditional liberal at the beginning of his term in office. But what ultimately defined his presidency was his amazing pliability on matters of principle.
Bill Clinton was relentless, eloquent and truly charming.
I was always fascinated by politics, and I did not like the direction the country was going under Bill Clinton.
I was very political when JFK ran.
Bill Clinton sitting on Air Force One getting his hair cut while people around the country cooled their heels and waited for him, became a metaphor for a populist president who had gotten drunk with the perks of his own power and was sort of, you know, not sensitive to what people wanted.
Kennedy was like a rock star. Carter was the earnest outsider at the height of Washington cynicism. Clinton was a bad boy who proposed his 'third way' of Democratic politics, and Obama brought hope and change to a country that so desperately needed it.
Regardless of Bill Clinton's politics or personal life, he grew up in obscurity and was elected to the presidency - twice. Don't take that away from him, because then you take it away from every other kid in America sitting out there in a school bus with a big dream.