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A friend of mine was somewhat flustered by me when I revealed in a Tribune article how she swooned over meeting President Clinton in Albuquerque.

That's Clinton, as in Bill, the charismatic, cool one whose chuckles do not call to mind the AFLAC duck.

It was February 1998 and Clinton's approval ratings were zipping along nicely. Life was good, even though two weeks before he had uttered those infamous words, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," which, by the way, did not torpedo his approval ratings.

News had spread to my friend that Clinton was having lunch at La Hacienda in Old Town, and so she decided to close up the shop she manages so that she and her employees could get a glimpse.

They gathered in the Plaza hoping to shake the hand of this sullied but still wildly popular leader, the only rock star president of our generation not to be struck down by an assassin's bullet.

Here's what I wrote then of her meeting with Clinton:

"When he got to me, I told him, `Sir, thank you for the quality of life that we have,' " she said. "He stared into my eyes, patted me on the back, shook my hand and said, `God bless you.'

"I've never been so mesmerized," she said. "Nothing has ever moved me like meeting him. There's just something about him. He was gracious. He was wonderful. He is gorgeous."

My friend, reading the article the next day, was worried she came off in the article as a star-struck teenager, and, frankly, she probably did.

But so what? Many of us, Democrats anyway, were starstruck back then, entranced by the Clinton mystique and engorged on its shiny largess that, sure, might have been more glitter than gold.

Those were, compared with now, the good old days.

It's hard to remember what it was like to have a president who inspires us like that, who offers more hope than hubris.

A NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll this week indicates that just 19 percent of Americans think the country is headed in the right direction; in those Monica Lewinsky days that figure was 47 percent.

This Thursday, Clinton returns to Albuquerque almost 10 years to the date he made my friend's knees buckle. This time, he comes to stump for his wife, Hillary Clinton, who envisions taking her turn at the helm of their presidential partnership.

I suspect he will attract the crowds as he always has, his popularity barely diminished by time and tarnished morals. Knees will likely still buckle. Nostalgia for the way we were will be strong and sweet.

But this is not 1998 and those good old days are long gone. We are at war — still. Our economy is sputtering. Our standing in the world is shaky. We are angry and weary and disillusioned and, perhaps, a little scared of it all.

In addition, Bill Clinton's political prowess took some tough hits of late, and I suppose that my friend might not altogether recognize the current prickly, irritated man as the same suave one who charmed her in 1998.

What happened to our Bill?

Last week, he situated himself as the barroom bully, defending his woman to her detriment and drowning out the voice she apparently found in New Hampshire with his acrimonious and often fallacious remarks on racism, sexism and Barack Obama.

As if she couldn't speak for herself.

Then this week a powerful faction of the Kennedy dynasty, another favorite of New Mexicans, anointed Obama as the "new generation of leadership."

Caroline Kennedy essentially passed the JFK torch to Obama by declaring that she has found in him the man who inspires people the way her father did.

Whether these latest developments prove fatal to Hillary Clinton's hopes is still unknown, of course.

We can simply speculate whether Bill or any other icon of the past will sway the enough New Mexicans to chose one contemporary candidate over the other, if they have any sway at all.

I haven't heard whether my friend will be taking off work to go see Bill Clinton this time, and I wouldn't be surprised if she isn't.

"Don't Stop" thinking about tomorrow really is so yesterday.