Clinton delivers

Bill Clinton delivers a personal testimonial

According to the former president's telling of his life with Hillary, he was only along for the ride.

By Annie Karni

It was Hillary Clinton’s journey the whole time -- and Bill Clinton was just along for the ride.

That’s how the former president tried to present the famous couple’s life together since they met at Yale Law School -- delivering a personal spouse’s speech on the second night of the Democratic National Convention.

“In the spring of 1971, I met a girl,” was Bill Clinton’s opening line, delivering a living room-style speech in a gigantic convention hall, telling stories to humanize his wife with tales of the Coke bottle glasses she wore as a student, and the three tries it took him to get her to marry him.

In a sometimes tedious chronological retelling of their life together -- he was still outlining the highs and lows of 1982 at 10:30 p.m. -- their life together in Arkansas wasn’t notable for his budding political career, but for his wife’s willingness to move “to a strange place, more culturally conservative than anywhere she’d ever been.” His own presidency wasn’t as interesting as Hillary Clinton’s decision as First Lady in 1999 to run for Senate.

Ahead of Tuesday night, the question was whether or not Bill Clinton could repeat the commanding performance he delivered from the convention stage in Charlotte four years ago -- a rousing address that gave a much needed lift to another Democrat who was muddling through against a supposedly beatable Republican opponent. That year, he bailed out President Obama by explaining his candidacy better than he had been able to do himself.

This time, the pressure was heightened by the unique nature of Bill Clinton’s role: he was the only headliner after a Monday program featuring a packed schedule of Michelle Obama, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. And he was not just speaking as a former president on behalf of a party nominee but also taking on the typically softer, spouse-of-the-candidate role.

“The ultimate goal is to speak of the Hillary he’s known for the last many decades as a person, a mother and a grandmother, but also from the perspective of someone who has sat in the Oval Office,” said President Obama’s former senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer. “He’s spent more time with her and knows her better than anyone else. It’s simple in conception and like all things, more challenging in execution.”

The execution received mixed reviews Tuesday night. Bill Clinton’s drudging tick-tock at times seemed to recall his embarrassing 1988 stemwinder, when the audience cheered in relief as the fresh-faced but long-winded Arkansas governor finally hinted at an end with the words “in conclusion.” On Tuesday night, the former president strayed wildly from the teleprompter, and even hushed a cheering audience at one point because they were eating into his precious stage time.

But he kept the delegates on the convention floor, who waved “America” signs, enraptured and landed memorable, poignant lines. “You nominated the real one,” he said, discussing his wife’s life as a changemaker. And there were no sounds or signs of dissent from Sanders supporters in the hall.

Bill Clinton’s personal testimonial as an observer of Hillary Clinton’s life journey offered a rare perspective -- and one Clinton allies hope will help more clearly define a positive vision of what her campaign is about, beyond standing as the anti-Donald Trump candidate.

While he campaigned across the country during the primary season, the skinnier, paler, somewhat diminished Bubba seemed to have lost some of his powers of persuasion. But he has also grown more optimistic about the future of the country, aides said, and heading into the evening, Democrats said the best version of his speech would focus on making an uplifting argument to contrast with the doom and gloom projected from Cleveland last week.

“The most important thing the president can do is to give life to her great work,” said Democratic strategist Mark Penn, a longtime Bill Clinton strategist who served as Hillary Clinton’s senior strategist on her 2008 campaign. “It is the positive case for her that will make the greatest difference coming out of this convention.”

Clinton succeeded in doing just that, without straying too much into his own biography, or joining the chorus of Trump-bashers -- a move which allies worried would make him the target of attacks. Instead, he presented a positive image of his wife as “first and foremost a mother,” and someone who “always wants to move the ball forward, that’s just who she is.”

In the past, Bill Clinton has been sometimes been a complicated surrogate when speaking on behalf of his wife -- during the height of the primary season, he seemed to dwell on his own record and remind voters to “caucus for Hillary!” sometimes as an afterthought.

But the fear of the former president overshadowing his wife is slowly fading away as she gains in stature and he recedes. And on Tuesday night, he made it clear that he was there to play wingman. “Once you’ve become the formal nominee of your party,” Pfeiffer said, “no one is overshadowing you.”