Ex-president gives his backing to Obama

Former president Bill Clinton vouched for Barack Obama's credibility on national security issues last night. (Yoon S. Byun/Globe Staff)

DENVER - Delivering a valedictory to the nearly two decades in which he and his wife dominated Democratic politics, Bill Clinton strode onstage to Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop" and promised that "America must always be a place called Hope," endorsing Barack Obama as an inheritor to the spirit of his first presidential run.

"Together, we prevailed in a campaign in which the Republicans said I was too young and too inexperienced to be commander in chief. Sound familiar?" Clinton asked the crowd. "It didn't work in 1992, because we were on the right side of history. And it won't work in 2008, because Barack Obama is on the right side of history."

In speeches nearly 24 hours apart, Bill and Hillary Clinton addressed distinct factions of disillusioned Democrats who months ago joined to comprise the New York senator's unusual primary-season coalition of professional liberal women and more socially conservative working-class whites.

While Hillary saluted her "sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits" and focused on women's issues like equal pay, her husband - who thrived this spring on rural turf where he wooed what strategists called "the Bubba vote" - vouched for Obama's credibility on national-security issues and his fitness to serve as commander in chief.

"It is a one-two punch of considerable power," said David Wilhelm, who managed Clinton's 1992 campaign. "They can, and have, sent a great message of unity and the stakes involved in this election."

The former president offered a broad tour of Obama's positions and the failings of the Bush administration, at one point directly addressing a criticism of John McCain to "all the Americans who aren't as hard-core Democrats as we."

"As a senator, he has shown his independence of right-wing orthodoxy on some very important issues," Clinton said. "But on the two great questions of this election - how to rebuild the American dream and how to restore America's leadership in the world - he still embraces the extreme philosophy that has defined his party for more than 25 years."

Although he came under criticism during the primary for his aggressive politicking, marked by a number of high-profile outbursts that were considered racially provocative, Clinton's return to a convention podium was celebrated with a long, flag-waving ovation that appeared to dwarf the welcome received by his wife.

"You've got Bill Clinton supporters and you've got Hillary supporters," said Eric Hampton, a county party chairman and Clinton delegate from Mississippi. "The people that are really loyal to Bill Clinton won't listen as much to Hillary and vice versa."

In fact, 16 years after the Clintons offered themselves to the country as a "two-for-the-price-of-one" partnership, a tribute to Hillary reimagined the family as a matriarchy.

In a video documentary narrated by their daughter, Chelsea, the former president was cheekily identified only as "Hillary's husband" - and the dominant axis was clearly the one running through Hillary from her mother to her daughter.