LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — In Bill Clintons primetime speech at the Democratic National Convention In 1988, the young governor of Arkansas so bored delegates that they cheered when he said, “In closing…” Many years later, as a former president whose legacy had made a comeback, Clinton helped Barack Obama’s re-election with a 2012 convention speech that earned him the nickname “secretary of explaining things.”
The 78-year-old Clinton, a veteran of four decades of convention speeches, knows as well as anyone the difference between a good performance and a disastrous one. What is less certain as he prepares to deliver his 12th convention address Wednesday is the impact he will have on a party trying to avoid Donald Trump from returning to the White House.
Clinton’s political journey, from Little Rock to the White House and later to elder statesman status, can be traced in part to his changing role at the Democratic National Convention — for better or for worse. Credited with reviving the Democrats’ fortunes when he was elected in 1992 and as the last president to leave office with a budget surplus, Clinton remains a rock star for many Democrats. But for others, his legacy is complicated both by changing views about his centrist brand of politics and by the sex-and-power scandal that nearly ended his presidency.
This time, as Democrats seek to end Trump’s political career, allies and experts see Clinton as a valuable messenger for Vice President Kamala Harris on economics: A recent AP-NORC poll shows that Americans trust Trump slightly more than the Democratic Party candidate on economic issues.
“Nobody has the ability to take very complex economic issues and explain them in plain terms — he’s the best at it — why it matters to you and to everybody else,” said Terry McAuliffe, former Virginia governor and close friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton.
But the former president’s influence may be waning, especially as he now speaks for a party that has moved further left from his centrist policies on issues such as crime and trade.
Although he spoke at the 1980 and 1984 conventions, Clinton made his first national impression when he formally nominated then-Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis at the 1988 convention. It did not go well.
What was supposed to be a 15-minute speech ended up lasting twice as long, and the delegates became increasingly disinterested.
“It was thirty-two minutes of utter disaster,” he later wrote in his 2004 autobiography, “My Life.”
Clinton recovered with a self-mocking appearance on Johnny Carson’s late-night show, where the host welcomed him by placing an hourglass on his desk. Clinton closed his appearance by playing the saxophone with the show’s band.
“He redeemed himself quickly,” said Skip Rutherford, a close friend and former head of Clinton’s presidential foundation.
That set the tone for Clinton’s next two convention speeches, first as the party’s nominee in 1992, where he declared that he still believed “in a place called Hope.” And in 1996, when he was running for re-election, he promised to build “a bridge to the 21st century.”
“He steps on the stage as the most experienced speaker at a conference there,” Rutherford said. “But I bet he’s still talking about the future.”
But Clinton’s stature as a former president has changed over the years, both through politics and the development of his legacy.
Some of that reflects how the #MeToo movement revived conversations about Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, a young White House intern, which led to his impeachment by the House. Lewinsky said in 2018 that while it was not sexual abuse, the relationship was “a gross abuse of power.”
In 2000, as Clinton was nearing the end of his second term as president, he turned the spotlight over to his vice president, Al Gore, who wanted to distance himself from the scandal and Clinton’s impeachment. Gore highlighted his own marriage with a long onstage kiss with Tipper Gore, underscoring the contrast between the two men. (The Gores divorced a decade later.)
Gore lost the presidency to George W. Bush in a race so close that it was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court. The historically narrow margin has since fueled debate over whether Clinton’s role in the campaign should have been handled differently.
Eight years later, Clinton’s role at the convention was complicated again after Hillary Clinton lost a bitter primary battle to Obama. He spoke at the 2008 convention in Denver, but Obama had little interest in dwelling on the ex-president’s legacy, and Clinton’s speech was on the undercard on the same night that Joe Biden delivered his speech as the party’s vice presidential nominee.
Clinton’s most memorable speech since then came in 2012, when he took a point-by-point approach to trashing the Republicans’ economic plans. The speech earned him the nickname “secretary of explaining stuff” from Obama. He also gave a heartfelt speech on behalf of his wife at the 2016 convention during her presidential bid.
The Clinton Presidential Library remains a popular tourist attraction in Little Rock nearly 20 years after it opened, and his foundation announced last year plans to expand it to include Hillary’s personal archives. He also plans to another memoir after the elections.
But Clinton’s star power may be less than Obama’s. About 6 in 10 Democrats see Obama as the best recent president, according to a 2023 report Pew Research Center Survey who asked American adults which president had done the best job of the past 40 years. About 2 in 10 Democrats chose Clinton.
That’s because the party has moved away from the center-left policies Clinton embraced for most of his presidency. Clinton won over moderates with measures like welfare reform and the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Trump and others say have sent thousands of jobs overseas.
“I would say he is a minor figure, there’s no question about it, within the Democratic Party,” said Nelson Lichtenstein, a Clinton administration historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Clinton could also be overshadowed by his wife, who remains popular in the party eight years after her failed White House race. Hillary Clinton was greeted by wild and sustained applause which lasted more than two minutes when she addressed the convention on Monday.
And Bill Clinton’s record has come under renewed scrutiny from his fellow Democrats in recent years. The 1994 crime bill he signed, which imposed tougher sentences and gave states incentives to build more prisons, has been criticized as a blunt instrument of mass incarceration that has destroyed the lives of thousands of people who could have been bought off with lighter sentences. Biden faced questions about his support for the legislation during the Democratic primary four years ago.
Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist and former adviser to Clinton, said the former president remains an asset to the party.
“I think he’s a veteran statesman and a well-liked figure, with some credibility on the economic front,” Begala said. “If I were a campaign manager, I would send him anywhere.”
That could make his speech useful in connecting Harris with moderate voters who don’t want to vote for Trump but who are receptive to his assertion that she is too liberal.
“I think the ‘secretary of explaining things’ still has work to do,” said Russell Riley, co-chair of the presidential oral history program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. “If you give him a little time, he can explain almost anything and can make sometimes unattractive choices seem not only logical but inevitable.”
___
Associated Press Editor Bill Barrow contributed to this report.