LOS ANGELES -- Bill Clinton is often in an LA state of mind. Al Gore and Joe Lieberman seldom are. The California writer Carey McWilliams once summed up this city in a way that explains its most famous fan: ''Los Angeles did not acquire an image so much as it projected an image which produced a city.'' This vast offramp for the other-directed was the perfect podium for the president's valedictory.
His always-accommodating, please-everyone oratory conceals the central truth of the Clinton era: His deeds outweigh his words. He has plenty to brag about, which means he doesn't have to. But he does because he fancies himself a fine orator, which is why he magnifies his misdeeds by trying to talk his way out of trouble.
Except for bungled denials, his words are not memorable. This was true Monday night, when he trod that well-worn bridge and cited the philosophical wisdom of Fleetwood Mac lyrics. Ah, but his performance: He enraptured the audience from the start, with his victory-lap entrance, seemingly from San Diego. The lighting in the Staples Center followed his script with rock-star atmospherics, the president's roadies massaging the crowd's emotions during a 40-minute solo. Clinton shone in narrative light, in expository light, in hortatory light. But never did the central spotlight dim and flicker. Great production values, as we say in showbiz. It's always about Bill. Very LA.
He also summed up his administration's accomplishments in a way most voters could understand. That is why some Los Angeles workers are pleased with the Clinton era. As they grouted loose bricks along Figueroa Street last weekend, a visitor asked, ''Que pasa?'' The smiling answer: ''Overtime!'' Also as a security precaution, downtown banks and shops were boarded up against possible riots. But in 1992, when Clinton was first elected, a deep recession boarded up many storefronts here.
''My hair's a little grayer, my wrinkles are a little deeper,'' Clinton told a happy convention at the Staples Center. After eight years, this city seems brighter and younger, its motto no longer ''retail space available.''
The convention crowd cheered, yet underneath, existential dread shimmered. Is this really a wrap? The passage of power from president to vice president is often awkward, ever since Andrew Jackson anointed Martin Van Buren in 1836.
In Raymond Chandler's novel about Los Angeles, ''The Long Goodbye,'' a character becomes weary with her hero: ''The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back. It didn't bother him enough to give him the shakes.'' That could be Tipper Gore or any other Democrat wondering about this lengthy farewell. Can Clinton stop politicking, stop kibitzing, stop talking? Will he decamp to a Trappist monastery for a vow-of-silence regimen? No, it's hard to picture Clinton as a monk. It's even harder to see him as a vice president, a position that requires tact and discretion.
A VP can be, as Hillary Clinton called Gore here, ''a trusted partner.'' Constitutionally, the job is a cipher. The first veep, John Adams, thought he should be addressed as ''your superfluous majesty.'' The vice president is often, as the alternative rock group, Korn, would put it, ''a freak on a leash.''
Gore has been a silent partner, an inner-directed cigar store Indian, a mannequin of deference and loyalty. Now he must become something like one Chandler character says of another in ''The Long Goodbye'': ''Tarzan on a big red scooter.''
The torch of the Democratic Party is being passed, in painfully slow motion. Clinton's expansive, other-directed, image-projecting personality swallowed up its ideological differences. Self-absorption has its uses. Clinton pleased the groundlings in his farewell, as well as the royalty upstairs. Soon, voters will find out if he taught Gore how to be a spokesman for skybox populism.
Martin F. Nolan's column appears regularly in the Globe.
