In a campaign that has so far been a largely policy-free zone, Clinton, 66, showed off his mastery of the public stage, both as an entertainer and an explainer.
If Barack Obama is the Harvard law professor of American politics who can never completely resist the temptation to lecture, then Bill Clinton is the saloon-bar sage.
In a bravura 48-minute speech to the Democrat National Convention, the former president reminded America what truly great political speech-making is all about. In a campaign that has so far been a largely policy-free zone, Clinton, 66, showed off his mastery of the public stage, both as an entertainer and an explainer.
He achieved in less than an hour what Obama has not managed in four years: making a coherent, carefully prosecuted case for four more years in office while spelling out the false arithmetic behind the Republicans' tax and spending plans. One minute Clinton was landing crowd-pleasing blows on the Republican Right; the next, he was walking his audience through the weeds of the Romney-Ryan budget plan and explaining why, by his maths, the numbers just didn't add up.
He attacked the "politics of constant conflict" and then, after praising Obama for assembling his "team of rivals" that included Cabinet members who supported his wife, Hillary, in the 2008 primaries, he said it proved that politics doesn't have to be a "blood sport". "Heck, he even appointed Hillary!" he added, after a perfectly calibrated pause, drawing waves of laughter from the crowd.
Like many of Clinton's speeches, this one could have used an editor, but it was delivered in the traditions of the great American stump speech: a mixture of extemporising and prepared ideas blended into a great, baggy monster of a performance that overran his prime-time television slot by 20 minutes. After nearly six months watching the empty back and forth between Romney and Obama, pundits on both sides of the political spectrum drooled over Clinton's ability to be both substantive and riveting.
Alex Castellanos, a Republican strategist who worked on Romney's 2008 campaign, said the Clinton speech could have changed the course of the election. "This will be the moment that probably re-elected Barack Obama," he told CNN.
Over the years, the Left-leaning Obama may have had his personal and policy differences with the more centrist Clinton but the incumbent president knows that there is no one on the Republican side who can match his predecessor's oratorical powers.
Clinton works his audience, mixing substance and near-slapstick in equal measure. He explained why Paul Ryan, the fiscal hardliner running with Romney, was wrong to accuse Obama of "raiding" $716 billion from the Medicare insurance programme.
This was not just because the "raid" was in fact a "saving", according to Clinton, but because those same savings had been listed "dollar for dollar" in the Congressman's own budget. "It takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you just did," he said, with a slow roll of his hangdog eyes. Again, they roared.
Obama, who came on stage to embrace Clinton after the speech, cannot have wished for a better endorsement. His only worry will be whether his own long-awaited keynote speech will look pale by comparison.
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