THE Democratic National Convention gets under way today but without President Clinton, who is on a slow train to Chicago which should get here in time for his acceptance speech on Thursday.
Although the train is called the 21st Century Express, it is taking four days to cover the 800 mile journey. As it chugs through West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan and Indiana, Mr Clinton will address prospective voters, conjuring up memories of the whistle stop campaigns of his Democratic predecessors, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
To nudge the train odyssey into the next century, a helicopter overhead will beam new presidential initiatives via satellite to the leaderless delegates in Chicago's convention hall.
As the latest polls show the Republican presidential rival, Mr Bob Dole, cutting the President's lead from 20 points to between seven and 12, Mr Clinton is determined to become the first Democratic President since Roosevelt to be re elected to a second term. Maybe that explains the train and Mr Clinton's slogan for the convention, "America is back on track".
The President is prepared for some flak from the liberal wing of the party over his signing of the welfare reform Bill which removes federal funding for poor families and benefits for legal immigrants. He has acknowledged that "there is some tension and it is fresh" but contrasts this with the Republican convention, where no dissent on abortion, for example, was allowed from platform speakers except Gen Colin Powell.
Down the line here in Chicago, Mrs Hillary Clinton is playing hostess to the 1,000 delegates in her hometown.
Mr Dole made a sneak appearance yesterday in a Chicago suburb to attend a Republican "picnic". The Democratic Mayor, Mr Richard M. Daley, had last week been accused of trying to prevent the Dole plane from landing at any of the Chicago airports.
But the Republican camp arranged to have him asked a question about this during a live TV interview and suddenly the Dole plane was cleared for landing, not in Lake Michigan as the mayor had half jokingly suggested.
The convention is, of course, choreographed to the last detail. Different themes such as crime, education, women and the environment will mark each session. Tonight the actor who played Superman, Christopher Reeve, now in a wheelchair after a fall from a horse, will address delegates.
The Windy City - only outsiders call it that - is anxious to obliterate images of students being clubbed and gassed in 1968, Al Capone and the St Valentine Day's massacre, and the human jungle of the old stockyards. No convention has been held here since 1968.
This convention is supposed to show that those bad old days are over and that it is safe for politicians to come back to the city which saw the nomination of Abraham Lincoln.