Don't lock her up! Hillary Clinton is really nice!

Unlike her husband.

I’m frequently asked if I ever meet the politicians I’ve commented on, and the answer is, oh hell yeah. I meet and talk to them all the time, and it’s usually either really fun or terribly awkward.

Yesterday, we discussed my passing acquaintance of Monica Lewinsky and my more intimate acquaintance with a Nordstrom credit card balance because of tie purchases.

Poor Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I know that it’s really a national sport to pick on Hillary, and I am not saying I was above drawing cartoons about her. In the words of Otter from Animal House, “I am not saying we didn't take certain liberties—we did.”

She was an elected official. She was an appointed official. She ran for president. Her husband was, shall we say, flawed. But I actually have met her a number of times, and found her to be like Al (Not AI, “AL”) Gore: who is the animatronic person I see on TV versus the warm person with blood pressure I have talked to in person?

The first time I met Sec. Clinton, she was the First Lady of the United States. That isn’t so much an accomplishment as a fluke of history. After all, you throw in with this guy, even when you’re clearly a better law student and, well, human being, and the next thing you know, you’re getting your head kicked in on 60 Minutes because you don’t stay home and bake cookies while your husband talks about, um, Mistakes That Were Made. Because Yale, kids. No Yalie stays home and bakes cookies.

OK, I knew one in Portland. I am sure she baked cookies. I’ll text her.

So Hillary marries this pudgy rube from Hope, Arkansas, and he’s got big plans, baby. Big plans.

The thing is, so does Hillary, the former girl from suburban Chicago, the smartest kid in the class, and, interestingly, a Goldwater Republican during the Kennedy era. What the actual flip? This still stuns me, Hillary all AuH2O when any sentient teenager in the United States is jumping into Jack Kennedy’s car in 1960 and tearing his cufflinks off. Jumpers, the press called them. No jumpers for Barry, trust me.

So Hillary gradually sheds her Goldwater upbringing (people say her dad was a prick) and goes to Wellesley, the sister school of Harvard, kills it, and gets into Yale. Nice.

At Yale, she meets this motormouth from the sticks who changed his name, falls for him, and moves to Arkansas. Hoo boy. You’re probably detecting my ambivalence about William Jefferson (Blythe) Clinton, who wisely dumped his given last name for his falling-down drunk stepdad’s. “Clinton” sounds vaguely Americana aristocratic—good consonant arrangement.

I don’t hate Bill Clinton. I understand Bill Clinton. I went to high school and college with guys like Bill Clinton. They either became great successes or substance abusers or both. In the immortal words of one of my female editors from back in the day:“Everybody dated a boy like Bill Clinton”. And, by God, she was right. Except we all wound up having to date this guy indefinitely. Don’t get me wrong. He’s a very facile bullshit artist of the first order.

“You want the leather/digital package, don’t you?”

Oh, he’s bright as hell, and it’s hard to not to appreciate his skill set.

One day, the FLOTUS came into The Oregonian to sell her ambitious national health care plan, which, of course, had no chance at all because it made actual linear sense. Congress killed it, and the Clintons as a couple were accused of overreach because the president of the United States put his wife in charge.

People, even President Who Looks Great Now Richard Nixon thought a national health care plan AND a guaranteed annual income was a good idea. But hey.

Mrs. Clinton in person is charming, smart, and actually hilarious. She handed out a complicated maze of a color diagram describing our national health care delivery system. I don’t remember much about what she said, but I do remember asking her to sign it. It’s around here somewhere in a frame.

I can’t find it. I looked.

Anyway, the next time I spoke with now-Sen. Hillary Clinton was in May, 2008, at the KGW studio in Portland. I got in because my buddy Josh Kardon, the top guy to Sen. Ron Wyden, relented after I begged him.

“Why should I break my pick for you if you’re kicking our ass all the time?” Josh rightly observed, before letting me in. She was in Oregon for a televised town hall, something her husband is great at and her not so much.

She was locked in a death struggle with Sen. Barack Obama, who virtually all my friends were supporting except for my dad and an opinion columnist we’ll call “David Sarasohn”.

David Sarasohn is my mentor and closest friend for 39.7 years.

I got a seat in the studio, just behind a camera, and I could have tiptoed six feet to her and no one would have noticed. When she entered the studio, she looked like the president, prime minister, queen, and CBS News anchor all rolled into one entity. I was stunned by her radiance.

Stunned. Oh, and she bantered easily with everyone prior to the start of the program, and I mean, she really had the touch.

Then they turned on the cameras.

Deer, meet headlights.

It’s like Al Gore’s stiff guy ghost slipped into her body, and she became Student Body President Never Smoked Weed Once or Even a Cigarette During the 1960s Hillary. That Hillary.

When the painful event was concluded, she immediately resumed her human shapeshifter form and started greeting the audience members. I slipped onto the stage, and introduced myself.

“Oh! You people do SUCH important work!” Then she animatedly and warmly was off to the races about cartoons she liked, laughed at more than everything I said, and generally made me question voting for Obama in three minutes. In fact, I called this “David Sarasohn” and said, I can’t believe this, but I want to vote for Hillary.

He was all kind of get-thee-behind-me-Satanish, calm down, it’ll be fine, blah blah.

I really detested how she ran against Obama, and particularly how her, well, sorry, A-hole husband ran against Obama (oh, you know, he’s like Jesse Jackson, chuckle, you know, heh heh).

So I calmed down and voted for Obama. In fact, I had met Obama a few days before in Albany, Oregon, and she blew him out of the water in the one-on-one charm department.

But I will tell you something, she was a generally wonderful person with me and I think she’s terrific. Such un-political cartoonist statement, but true.

I’ll hit that Obama meetup next week, along with the MSNBC Fun Orange Hatred Angry Stuff you may be waiting for.

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