By Dana Milbank
Tuesday, June 3, 2008

MILBANK, S.D. It is a measure of the peculiarity of this year's presidential race that the road to the Democratic nomination runs through Milbank.

Until Monday, Milbank's greatest distinction was being the birthplace of American Legion baseball. But after Bill Clinton rolled into this small farm town in northeastern South Dakota, Milbank can now rightfully claim to be the place where Hillary Clinton's campaign surrendered.

The former president had given hundreds of speeches across the country, spreading a defiant message that, whatever the delegate count, his wife was still on her way to winning the nomination. But something changed on the road to Milbank on Monday, and when he arrived here, Clinton could not deceive the Milbankers.

"I want to say," he told about 500 Milbankians -- about 15 percent of the town's population -- "that this may be the last day that I'm ever involved in a campaign of this kind. I thought I was out of politics until Hillary decided to run, but it has been one of the greatest honors of my life to be able to go around and campaign for her for president."

"Last day"? Past tense? It was the first time either Clinton had allowed the pervasive pessimism to infiltrate a public utterance. And Bill Clinton had more to tell Milbank: "My daughter has worked her heart out, she's made over 400 appearances for her mother, and just since March -- I stopped, I didn't count back before then -- but in the 10 states and Puerto Rico we've campaigned in since March, I have been in almost 300 separate communities."

That he was delivering his valedictory to Milbank -- or that he was talking to Milbank at all -- was a measure of the diminished circumstances of his wife's campaign. Since Barack Obama replaced Hillary Clinton as the Democratic front-runner, the former president has poured his heart into appearances in small towns across the country. As her chances grew slimmer, his towns grew smaller, to the point where Clinton found himself in Milbank, a place too small and too Republican (the county went 3 to 2 for President Bush over John Kerry in 2004) to be of much electoral use.

But as South Dakota and Montana put an end to the 50-state primary balloting on Tuesday, Bill Clinton has also been fighting to recover his own standing. His racially charged words and red-faced tirades -- most recently labeling a reporter a "scumbag" -- have contributed heavily to his wife's difficulties.

Now, in his words and his marathon appearances, he seems to be making the case that it wasn't his fault.

He has a lot of work to do to. "I've been disappointed," Merlin Smart, at the Clinton rally in Milbank, said of the former president's "too much" antics on the campaign trail. "It hasn't helped Hillary at all, and it brought him down to normal status rather than superstar status." Smart, a Milbank man, was wearing a Clinton sticker, but he confides, "I personally am going to vote for Obama."

Still, Milbank was honored to receive Clinton, whom city fathers believe is the first sitting or former president to visit the old railroad stop. They hosted him in the cavernous Milbank Visitor Center, across the street from the park where the town's motto -- "You'll like Milbank" -- is written in three-foot concrete letters. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime event for Milbank," asserted Jason Kettwig, the Milbank administrator.

It's hard to tell who will carry Milbank on Tuesday -- "we don't poll Milbank," Kettwig points out -- and a poll by Dakota Wesleyan University showing Obama winning the state by 12 points is six weeks out of date. But what's less of a mystery is who will carry Milbank, and South Dakota, in November; the Dakota Wesleyan poll gave Republican John McCain a 17-point advantage. And that will tend to make Tuesday's results, whoever the winner, rather unpersuasive. "South Dakota is traditionally Republican to the max, so to have the Democratic nominee decided in South Dakota is ironic," allowed Boyd Sussex, wearing a Milbank Basketball sweat shirt at the Clinton rally.

But the former president also had things other than his wife's fortunes on his mind when he spoke in Milbank on Monday. Vanity Fair writer Todd Purdum, married to Clinton's former press secretary, had just published an article raising questions about his personal life and business dealings. "Much of Clinton's behavior on the campaign trail this year has been so maladroit as to constitute malpractice: his blowups at television reporters, his derisive dismissal of Obama's unwavering anti-war stance as a 'fairy tale,' and most of all his denigrating comparison of Obama's performance in the South Carolina primary to Jesse Jackson's victories there two decades ago," Purdum wrote, also assigning him some blame for Ted Kennedy's endorsement of Obama.

When a writer from the liberal Web site Huffington Post buttonholed Clinton after his speech in Milbank, the former president declared that Purdum was "sleazy," "dishonest," "slimy" and a "scumbag."

That, of course, only reinforced the accusation that Clinton has been an unhelpful distraction for his wife. "He's the most dynamic politician of our time," said Steve Street, a Democratic state representative at the Milbank event, "but at times he's hurt her."

In Milbank, Clinton was doing his best to remind people of his favorable traits. "Hello, Milbank!" he called to the overflowing hall. "Aren't you glad South Dakota gets to finish the job?" He then went into an aw-shucks routine. He said that Chelsea had told a crowd in Indiana that her mother would be a better president than her father, and "I agree with my daughter." He then mentioned that his wife asked him to verify a man's claim that his car got 100 miles per gallon. "I don't want to be made a fool of, [so] you call him and figure out if he's telling the truth," he recalled Hillary saying. "That's my job," he added.

But Clinton skipped his tough lines about Obama, his bitter complaints about the media and his usual assertion that his wife should be the rightful Democratic nominee. Instead of red-faced finger-pointing, it was a long and wonkish discussion about wind power, and a soft sell for his wife. "She'd be the best president," he said mildly, "so I hope you'll say yes for her tomorrow."

For the fiery former president, it was tantamount to a white flag. And Milbank was happy to witness it. Said Sue Kulbeik, owner of a Milbank hardware store: "He's a big deal for Milbank."