I've been on at least one occurrence of what could be called a date by North-American standards. It was when I invited a girl to join me in attending a concert in a bar, back in January of 1998. Let's call her Marie.
We had made out the month before, after meeting informally at a friend of mine's apartment. I knew Marie casually from high-school, and she ended up at that meetup because her younger brother was friends with the younger brother of one of my close friends. We were sitting next to each other, chatted, and hit it off quite well, and ended up making out, good-heartedly pestered by her brother as I accompanied them to their home. Then it was holiday break, that I largely spent wondering what was at hand. Came January, I went into ridiculous ploys to get back in touch with Marie, ploys that almost (or maybe partially) worked, until I finally called my friend's home, to get his younger brother, in order to get his friend's home's number (it was before cellphones were widespread in France, FYI), so I could talk to Marie and invite her to meet at that concert. I guess that counts as a "date" by North-American standards.
I've been in at least one occurrence of fucking up what could be called a date by North-American standards. In 2002, a female co-worker I met in a training program we had in the tech service company we both worked on, and I got along with quite well, invited me to hang out in Paris on a saturday. Let's call her Hélène. Hélène and I were both transplants into the Paris area, it really wasn't about going to the common tourist traps of the "City of Lights". She lead me to her favourite Corsican bistrot (at this point I have to mention she was Alsatian), we walked around, in non-touristing areas, it was pretty cool. At the end of the day, when we parted at the train station to return to our respective suburbs, I... pecked her on the cheek. And it was goodbye see you monday. Looking back, remembering how she was looking at me at that moment, I know she was expecting a real kiss. Took me too long to figure it out. I hope she didn't take it too hard. I hope she didn't take it as her being not pretty enough.
There's also that case of a girl (let's call her Dajla) giving me her number and my not calling her back because I wasn't sure what to call her back about. It took me about eight years to understand that I should just have called Dajla back to hang out somewhere and see if something came out of it. Which would maybe have been a date by North-American standards.
Don't count on me to judge that Clinton fucked up in any way here.