WHAT do you think inspired Hillary Clinton to get up Wednesday morning after five hours of sleep for an impromptu dash to look at four presidents' heads carved on the side of a mountain? Maybe it was as her staff claimed: She wanted to do it just for fun. “This is a tourist occasion,” she said firmly as she walked around the Mount Rushmore visitor's plaza, trailed by a few dozen journalists. Let's hope so. She deserves a break, even if it consisted of staring up at the 20-foot-long nose of Thomas Jefferson and discussing beetle infestation in the spruce forests with the Native American guide while everyone else took pictures of their friends taking pictures of Hillary. “I touched her!” screamed a middle-aged tourist. South Dakota, which along with Montana is going to have the Last Primary on Tuesday, is certainly enjoying itself. “It's like rocket fuel was spread over the state. There's so much excitement,” said the executive director of the state Democratic Party. The people here, like Hillary, can use a good moment. “We're going to sing an encouragement song for our presidential hopeful, and also an encouragement song for our people,” said a traditional drummer at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, a place where residents have nothing but endless affinity for a woman who just keeps on keeping on. It took more than four hours of driving for Clinton to speak to a crowd of less than 200, standing in a chilly wind, delivering one of her trademark lists of promises, from turning the Plains states into “the Saudi Arabia of wind farming” to creating a presidential tribal liaison. And she would undoubtedly do something about those beetles, too. It's been a rather tough spring here, weather-wise. Some of us do not believe anything that has the word “South” in its name should still have traces of snow on the ground during the last week of May, but there you are. The future is sunlight, and, on Tuesday, the national spotlight. Hillary says that either she, Bill or Chelsea will be in South Dakota throughout the final week. Every day a Clinton sighting. South Dakota's enthusiasm for the Democratic primary is in part pragmatic. Tourism is the state's second-largest business after agriculture, and every little bit of publicity helps. The whole nation knows about Mount Rushmore, but do you realize how much stuff comes along with it? Reptile Gardens, petting zoos, glow-in-the-dark miniature golf, Sitting Bull Crystal Caverns, Christmas Village, Bear Country U.S.A. Every time somebody stops to ride a bumper car, pan for gold or visit the presidential wax museum, an angel gets its wings. There's a serious public purpose at work here, too. When you live in a reliably red state with only three electoral votes and no real fund-raising potential, it takes being overlooked in the presidential races to a whole new level. Hillary's insistence that the fight isn't over, that there's still the superdelegates, that Florida and Michigan must be counted, that there's still a chance she can win, has had the useful effect of making the voters here feel as if they might conceivably have a role to play. So what better way for her to start her day than with a trip to a monument that reminds us how democracy can, at times, produce extraordinary results? And, of course, if you're trying to wrest the presidential nomination from Barack Obama in two final primaries that he's expected to at minimum split, there's something very attractive about seeing the happy ending that followed somebody's decision to try carving four 60-foot sculptures out of the side of a mountain. “It was, critics said, a preposterous idea,” intones Tom Brokaw in a documentary on How They Did It. On the day before Hillary's arrival, Mount Rushmore had been enveloped in a cold, damp fog that completely obscured the presidents. It was a bracing 34 degrees, but tourists soldiered through anyway, shivering and snapping pictures of each other standing in front of a big cloud of mist. “Maybe that's a metaphor of the national climate,” said Skip Brown, a visitor from Minneapolis who was hoping that when Photoshop got through, the pictures he was taking would bear a faint image of George Washington. “Earlier, the fog rolled out for a little bit and this cheer erupted,” said Eric Eickhoff from Wisconsin, whose three young sons were happily watching the documentary. The boys had also loved the presidential wax museum. “Look, there's a chipmunk!” cried someone on the plaza as a little rodent scampered across. Everybody went for their cameras. When the idea of visiting Mount Rushmore came up, Hillary must have intuited how perfect it was. Not only the site of an impossible dream come true, but also the place where visitors make the best of the cards they're dealt, prepared if necessary to stand around admiring an impenetrable fog. – New York Times __
