Bill Clinton’s pickup truck — its bed lined in AstroTurf — a lesson for Obama

Can anyone imagine Bill Clinton going to Boston to try to save a sinking Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate by ridiculing her Republican opponent’s pickup truck?

No. In fact, about a year into his first term as president — time-wise, almost exactly where Obama is now — Clinton reminisced about his El Camino pickup. In early February 1994, during a stop at a Louisiana truck plant, he mentioned with a wink that he had lined the truck bed with AstroTurf. “You don’t want to know why, but I did.” (He later tried to withdraw the insinuation, but, in a preview of things to come, he seemed to be saying, It depends on what the meaning of “pickup” is.)

President Obama, who still favors the same inexpensive haircuts he got when he was a Chicago community organizer and law lecturer, is, in many ways, genuinely a regular guy. Yes, he wears well-cut suits and nice ties and crisp white shirts, but when he’s relaxing he wears running or basketball gear available at any Nike store. (Michelle is the Obama with the expensive tastes, and last April sported $540 Lavin sneakers while volunteering at a D.C. food bank.)

In the week since Scott Brown’s victory, Barack Obama has devoted himself to trying to connect to ordinary people, some of whom — especially white guys — voted last week for Brown and found his pickup truck endearing and reassuring.

Obama obviously can’t buy a pickup truck, but he should stick to his simple style, which remains almost a uniform. He should learn a lesson from Clinton — who morphed from regular guy dressed in unremarkable clothes and cheap accessories to a man who, on any given day, sports clothes and jewelry so pricey that their total cost might top the annual salary of the average blue-collar worker.

Clinton used to boast about wearing a Timex watch (the company had factories in Arkansas, so no surprise). Around the White House on a Saturday he wore jeans and a sweatshirt; and we all remember his ill-fitting running short shorts. He used to like to say that he bought his shoes at a discount store and he wondered aloud why anyone needed more than one pair of black shoes and one pair of brown.

The first sign of impending dandyism came just four months into his first term, when he had his hair trimmed aboard Air Force One while it idled on a runway at LAX. The stylist was Cristophe of Beverly Hills who, back then, charged $200 and up for a haircut. Clinton was defended by his “communications director” George Stephanopoulos, who, when asked who paid, replied, “The president and his family have a personal services contract with Cristophe … ” Oh.

As Clinton became seriously enamored of his buddies in Hollywood, friends began to note that the Timex Ironman LCD was replaced by high-end mechanical watches. (Today the former president has an extensive collection of watches, some valued at six figures, including a Audemars Piguet skeleton watch.) According to one of my sources for my book Clinton in Exile, Secret Service agents who guarded him while he was president described Clinton as “a clotheshorse; impeccable taste and always likes to get dressed very nicely.”

Obama would do better to follow the style example of Bush 41 — perhaps even Bush 43. Neither Bush gave the impression of being the kind of guy who couldn’t pass a window without catching his reflection. The elder Bush wore a cheap watch with preppy, striped fabric bands. The younger Bush seemed more vain — as in the legacy of Andover and Yale affecting a cowboy pose. Bush 43 wore a watch by the young German watchmaker Michael Kobold. (Kobold’s watches range from $2,500 to $25,000 and are advertised as the preferred watch “for polar explorers, NASA test pilots, NSA and CIA operatives.”)

Bill Clinton also wears a Kobold. Bush paid for his; Clinton didn’t, but, Kobold told me, Clinton, who is known to be extremely vain about his hands, made up for the freebie by giving Kobold’s watch “wrist time” (when he appeared, for example, on “Larry King Live” or posed for the cover of Ladies’ Home Journal).

Is anyone investigating whether the whole pickup deal with Scott Brown was a fraud? Was it a prop or a real part of his life? Remember Republican presidential hopeful/Tennessee senator/Washington lobbyist Fred Thompson. He used to ditch the red pickup when the campaign cameras left and happily climb into his black Lincoln Continental.