Bill Clinton, Scoring a 3rd Run

Bill Clinton works a crowd in Aiken, S.C. -- presumably for his wife. (By Win Mcnamee -- Getty Images)

He then resumed his attack on Obama, accusing him of being a Reagan booster and an admirer of Republicans.

A reporter asked how Clinton enjoyed being called his wife's "attack dog."

"The only time I was snarled at is when I questioned the argument and the attack that had been raised against Hillary for months and months," he answered mildly.

It was an ideal setting for Clinton. The menu board listed black-eyed peas and fried chicken livers, admirers asked for autographs and called out "You da man," and Clinton, wearing a "Hillary 2008" lapel pin, got to talk about his favorite candidate: himself.

Asked about his wife's chances in South Carolina, he pointed out that "This is a state I won in '92 . . . so I like it here and I love being down here."

Asked another question about the presidential race, he again returned to the '90s: "We challenged the conventional wisdom when we proved that you could balance the budget and grow the economy."

Judy Woodruff asked if he thought his presence in South Carolina, before Saturday's primary, was tantamount to his wife being here, even though she was back in Washington. "It's probably the next best thing," Clinton allowed.

The crush of adoring supporters made Clinton 25 minutes late for his next stop, in Aiken. But once here, he quickly resumed his bid for a third term.

"Every president from Dwight Eisenhower through to me supported the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty," he informed the crowd. "We finally got it done."

"We paid down the deficit, we balanced the budget, then we paid down the debt three years in a row," he continued. "We had a projected surplus of $5.8 trillion."

"Think what being president's like," he went on. "They play a song every time you walk into the room." After he left office, "nobody played a song anymore," he said. "I didn't know where I was."

But not to worry: They still love him. A questioner rose to pay tribute to the former president. "I'm one of those people that you brought out of poverty," she told him. "I want to say thank you."

Clinton tried to strike a note of humility. "This campaign is not really about the candidates," he told his supporters in Aiken. "It's about you." But that was just false modesty. Everybody knows the election is really about him.