The Accompanists

Hours later, no dirt surfaced as Clinton addressed an enthusiastic throng on nearby St. Helena Island. He stayed on his very best behavior, developing the approach he has used in this week's run-up to Super Tuesday. More than an hour late, he skipped the pleasantries and charged right into his pitch.

Within three minutes, he was describing a brewing economic calamity. Within four, he was offering a three-point plan to deal with the mortgage crisis. Within five, he was rattling off his version of life in America seven years after the end of his presidency:

"Median family income after inflation's about a thousand dollars lower today than it was the day I left office. But the cost of health care has about doubled, the cost of a college education is up, the cost of energy is up, the cost of housing is up. Last year, food costs grew at twice the rate of inflation. . . . In our eight years, we had 22.7 million jobs and almost 8 million people move from poverty into the middle class."

On he went for more than an hour, firing off policies and programs as if it were a State of the Union address. Pell grants, health-care reform, stem-cell research, green-collar jobs, veterans, Medicare, the Geneva Conventions, Iran, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the tax code. He said, at one point, "Let me be very specific about this."

Hillary Clinton may be the presidential candidate, but much of the future Bill Clinton sketches on the stump is about putting the band back together. Watching him engage the crowd is a little like going to a Beach Boys concert, 20 years on. He knows all the old tunes and delivers them reliably. The crowd, mostly middle-aged and older, laughs and cheers in satisfied bursts, remembering the good times.

Clinton's talk is neither personal nor emotional. He does less to humanize his wife, which is often the designated role of political spouse, than to recite her credentials and bolster her argument that she is more ready for the White House than Obama. He mentions her often -- "The third thing she says we have to do"; "she will never tolerate that"; "finally, she believes . . . " -- but the narrative often veers into Clintons, plural, or Bill Clinton, singular.

"I tell people all the time," he said at one point, "this war is costing $120 billion a year."

Near then end, Clinton called his wife "the most qualified, best candidate I've had a chance to support for president in 40 years as a voter. You know, a lot of mean things have been said about Hillary over the years, mostly because she had the misfortune to be my wife and they were being mean to me. And they were mean to me because I won twice. It wasn't too complicated!"

The crowd loved it -- and received the intended message.

"If you vote for Hillary and she wins, you get two for the price of one," gushed Lynn Sutherland, 61, a part-time decorator, as Clinton 42 shook dozens of hands before racing to Charleston to introduce the aspiring Clinton 44. "There's an enormous amount of things he can do that will be unbelievably helpful to the country."

Beaufort resident Kevin Mears, 40, considered the former president's earlier criticism of Obama "a bit of a distortion. It's a bit of a no-no. But he's walking a line that others have never walked before. We should cut him a little slack."

Michelle Obama had a different challenge when she spoke to audiences of 200 or more in Hilton Head and rural Estill. She, too, talked of her spouse's readiness, but in different terms and tones, less a policy seminar than a plea delivered around a kitchen table. She pointed to his community organizing and his four terms in the Illinois senate.