Hillary Clinton Embraces Her Husband's Legacy

Right after Christmas, these advisers said, Clinton plans to make the case on national security grounds, citing the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as evidence that unexpected crises can arise. The argument is in some ways similar to the one President Bush made in 2004, when he campaigned on what he described as his proven leadership in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks and said the terrorist threat called for keeping him in the job. But Clinton is playing on more than just national security concerns, discussing economic security, as well.

"Time to pick a president" is the new theme, which will be unveiled in Iowa next week.

The idea of a restoration -- or as the campaign puts it, a "new beginning" -- is particularly strong in the speeches Bill Clinton is giving in Iowa and New Hampshire on his wife's behalf.

On Thursday night in Holderness, N.H., the former president returned again and again in his hour-long speech to the achievements of his administration as proof that his wife would be able to bring results if she were elected. Several times, he cited the statistics on the economic gains of the 1990s -- the rise in family income, the decline in poverty and in the number of uninsured, and the increase in students obtaining college aid ("I still know the numbers," he said).

He contrasted these gains with what has occurred during the Bush administration, casting the past seven years as a dismal detour or regression in the march of progress that began in the 1990s and would continue with Hillary Clinton's election. "Hillary says, 'My vision is that America must make a new beginning by first rebuilding the middle-class dream,' " he said.

For all his talk about the 1990s, though, the former president does not go into great detail about the role his wife played in his administration, instead simply leaving the impression that she was part of the team that brought about the decade's gains.

He credits her with helping create the Children's Health Insurance Program, after her push for universal health care failed, and he talks about her trips abroad, building ties in foreign countries and speaking out on controversial subjects such as women's rights in Beijing and female genital mutilation in Africa. He briefly mentions her assistance in achieving peace in Northern Ireland and the Balkans.

At times, his pitch for his wife is focused so much on his own accomplishments as president that it almost sounds as if he himself is running for reelection. In a two-hour interview Thursday with the Concord Monitor, he referred to his having made a "terrible mistake" while president, an apparent reference to the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal, and then added: "The voters will have to make their own judgments about that. I've done everything I could, first of all, to try to be a good president and, secondly, to try to be a good after-president."