The New York Times-20080127-A Former President- Back in the Thick of Politics
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A Former President, Back in the Thick of Politics
Full Text (976 words)When former President Bill Clinton took to the podium on Friday at the Chapman Cultural Center in Spartanburg, he told the audience a story. He said he had just inadvertently walked into the adjacent auditorium and was mortified to see that all the seats were empty. Then, he recounted, he saw a tech guy in the back of the room and said to himself, Well, I'll give my best speech to one guy. He pounded his fist. I'll give my best speech if it's the last thing I do today.
It was a more formal expression of Mr. Clinton's determined cry in 1992 that he would hunt down every last voter in New Hampshire until the last dog dies. But his determination is no less heartfelt.
Mr. Clinton is back in campaign mode, this time on behalf of his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, as she seeks the Democratic presidential nomination.
It is a remarkable sight, a former president steeped in the details of campaigning. At this time of year, Mr. Clinton could be in Davos, Switzerland, mingling with his fellow global elites at the annual economic summit. Instead, he is working like a precinct captain in places called Barnwell and Walterboro and Kingstree.
A week ago in Las Vegas, he combed the casinos, pulling out supporters for his wife, one by one, for the Democratic caucuses in Nevada. This past week, ahead of the party's primary election on Saturday in South Carolina, he hop-scotched across the state, holding back-to-back town-hall-style meetings in which he expounds on public affairs and answers voters' questions at length.
Mr. Clinton finished in Myrtle Beach a few nights ago at midnight after a session that lasted three hours. And on the long drives between appearances, he works the phones, trying to win over those officials who will have superdelegate status at the Democratic National Convention.
Mr. Clinton may have started this campaign as a mate, but he leaves South Carolina as a running mate. He helps Mrs. Clinton cover twice the territory, plays bad cop to her good cop, sets message and maps strategy. As the campaigns pivot now to the nearly two dozen states that vote on Feb. 5, Mr. Clinton is being deployed to Missouri while Mrs. Clinton works Tennessee.
The double-teaming grew so pervasive here that Mrs. Clinton's chief rival, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, lamented, I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes.
Of all his activities here, Mr. Clinton's heated comments about the Obama campaign and the media garnered the most attention and prompted a prominent Democrat to call on Mr. Clinton to chill.
On Saturday in Columbia, even before Mr. Obama's big victory became clear, reporters asked Mr. Clinton what it said about Mr. Obama that it took two people to beat him. Mr. Clinton dismissed the question as bait, but added: Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice, in '84 and '88. And he ran a good campaign. Senator Obama has run a good campaign here, he has run a good campaign everywhere. Bringing up Jesse Jackson in response to a question about Mr. Obama seemed to be another way of pointing out that Mr. Obama is black and at the same time marginalizing his importance, as well as South Carolina's, since Mr. Jackson did not become the nominee.
But while pundits debated the degree to which those comments were strategic and whether they helped or hurt Mrs. Clinton, those thrusts and parries made up only a fraction of his public appearances here, and voters were not that interested in them.
Instead, they sat in rapt attention at Mr. Clinton's town-hall-style events, which were essentially mini lectures on public affairs. Mr. Clinton would open by discussing various issues for half an hour. Occasionally he would say, Hillary thinks this, but their views are so similar, and he spoke for her so confidently, that he rarely bothered to say where he left off and she began.
The voters would then respectfully ask policy questions -- about Mrs. Clinton's plans for health care, education and economic development. His detailed answers to a single question could run 15 minutes. His vantage point is sometimes paternal; at nearly every stop, he said he regretted that Mrs. Clinton's father was no longer alive to see his little girl run for president.
But the former president also gets questions that can bring an unexpected response.
A few people have raised race-related issues. In Charleston, Mr. Clinton suggested that his wife might lose the primary to Mr. Obama because of race. They are getting votes, to be sure, because of their race or gender, he said. And that's why people tell me Hillary doesn't have a chance of winning here.
Such pronouncements help to explain why Mr. Clinton has drawn an entire press contingent chasing after him. He is officially not the candidate, of course, but he has become so enmeshed in the campaign that the candidate who is running is often called the Clintons. And that seems just fine to many of the people at these events; they often say how happy they would be to have him back in the White House.
Mr. Clinton is frequently asked what his role there would be. As he said here Friday night, he would not be in the Cabinet because that would be illegal, and he said he didn't want to big foot the vice president or secretary of state. I'm perfectly content to give her my advice, he said.
Then the former president made a promise. I will be there for her, he said, but I will not interrupt the ordinary functioning of her government. And you should not want me to.
[Illustration]PHOTO: Bill Clinton, appearing on Friday at an event for Hillary Rodham Clinton in Spartanburg, S.C., is back in campaign mode. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN BYRUM/SPARTANBURG HERALD-JOURNAL)