The Other Democratic President Outshone by His Wife

When Bill Clinton walked onto the stage of the United Center at the Democratic National Convention last night, he received an ovation befitting a Democrat who twice won the presidency. But the roar that greeted him was not quite as loud, nor as long, as the one that greeted the Clinton who twice lost.

Nearly a quarter century after Bill Clinton left the White House, he remains a beloved figure in many corners of the Democratic Party. At a few points during his speech, he brought the convention crowd to its feet with quips that called to mind the Clinton of old. When Donald Trump speaks, Clinton urged Democrats in one such zinger, “don’t count the lies. Count the I’s.” But like the other former Democratic president who spoke in prime time this week, Clinton was outshone by his wife.

Bill has for decades been the more gifted communicator of the Democratic power couple; that wasn’t the case this week. On Monday night, after nearly two minutes of initial cheers from the audience, Hillary Clinton delivered the crisper, more energizing speech. She championed Kamala Harris as the candidate who could shatter “the highest, hardest glass ceiling,” and she mocked the man who prevented her from doing so herself: “We have him on the run now,” Clinton said of Trump.

[Mark Leibovich: The DNC is a big smiling mess]

As time has eased the Democrats’ anguish over Hillary’s 2016 loss to Trump, the almost-president has become the bigger draw over the former president. That is especially true among the youngest Democrats who have gathered in Chicago this week. Gen Z Democrats have far more experience with Hillary than Bill; those in their early 20s weren’t even born until after he left office. Hillary’s 2016 candidacy, and the Women’s March that followed her defeat, served for many of them as a political awakening. “She really paved the way for a lot of the organizing that’s happening now,” Sabrina Collins, a 25-year-old from Kentucky, told me.

Clinton was not the first choice for young Democrats in 2016, many of whom rallied behind Senator Bernie Sanders’s progressive movement. But among Democrats coming of age now, she has achieved something approaching icon status. On a shuttle bus inching its way through clogged streets to the United Center early Monday evening, I overheard one 20-something woman cry out, “If I don’t hear Hillary Clinton speak, I’m going to riot.” At least for some Democrats, the bitterness over her loss to Trump—usually accompanied by rueful jokes about her inattention to Wisconsin that year—has given way to admiration of her resilience. Speaking to Michigan’s delegation yesterday morning, the retiring Senator Debbie Stabenow hailed Clinton’s “courage” in putting a woman’s name on a presidential ticket, arguing that it would break, or at least lessen, the stigma Harris might face. “Don’t underestimate the power of that,” Stabenow said of Clinton. “We have to see women’s faces in power to make power happen.”

At an event hosted by the Gen Z group Voters of Tomorrow on Tuesday, a 24-year-old member of the Indianapolis city council, Nick Roberts, shared his favorite moment from the convention’s opening night. He didn’t mention Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s energetic endorsement of Harris, nor President Joe Biden’s emotional valedictory. To Roberts, the evening’s highlight came during Clinton’s denunciation of Trump’s 34 felony convictions, as the arena crowd began chanting “Lock him up!” At first, Clinton tried to ignore the shouts and then, for a moment, she seemed to consider how to respond. Would she gently admonish the crowd, as Harris has done when supporters have started the chant at her rallies? Would she—dare she—affirm the same chant that Trump had used against her? Clinton chose to respond wordlessly, but knowingly. With a wide grin, she nodded along for several seconds. Roberts loved it. “I know the campaign is trying to tone it down,” he told the Voters of Tomorrow crowd. “But with all she’s been subjected to the last eight years, I think she deserved those 10 seconds of glee.”

In conventions past, it was Bill Clinton who provided the more electrifying moments. He has addressed every DNC since 1980, and, as he recalled last night, he’s attended every convention since 1972. His 2012 defense of President Barack Obama’s economic record was so well received that Obama—the first of two future presidents to defeat Clinton’s wife—dubbed him “the secretary of explaining stuff.” In 2020, Clinton was relegated to a five-minute video—his shortest appearance in more than 30 years. That was an entirely virtual convention because of the coronavirus pandemic, but it was also the first since the #MeToo reckoning had cast sexual-misconduct allegations against Clinton (which he has denied) and his long history of extramarital affairs in a harsher light. In the late 1990s, many Democrats dismissed Clinton’s relationship with a 22-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, as private, consensual, and unworthy of public rebuke. Two decades later, some of them had regrets. Kirsten Gillibrand, who took over Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat in New York, said in 2017 that Bill Clinton should have resigned over the Lewinsky affair.

[Caitlin Flanagan: Bill Clinton: A reckoning]

The Gen Z attitude toward Bill Clinton appeared somewhat indifferent. I asked several attendees at the Voters of Tomorrow event which Clinton they were more excited to see. All of them immediately said Hillary. When I asked about Bill, a few of them politely declined to answer, because, they told me, they didn’t know much about him. “I’ll be honest: I just recently got into politics, so there’s a lot of history I need to catch up on,” Misty Ly, a 20-year-old from Georgia, replied. She said she had never heard the name Monica Lewinsky.

The former president’s return to the convention stage drew no significant outcry from Democrats. Talk of his behavior with women has faded, and most of the Democrats I spoke with this week said they had no problem with the party featuring him again. Bill Clinton’s speech lasted longer than Hillary’s, but whether he was allotted more time or simply took more time wasn’t clear.

Clinton reportedly scrapped the original draft of his remarks and rewrote the speech to be more joyful and energetic after seeing Monday’s program. Yet within moments of taking the stage, he had veered off the prepared script. His voice was weaker than it once was, and he slightly mispronounced Kamala’s name twice. Clinton’s rambling and ad-libbing occasionally detracted from the speech’s rhythm and cadence. One of the biggest applause lines was a joke about his age—and Trump’s. Clinton turned 78 earlier this week, two months after Trump did. “The only personal vanity I want to assert is that I’m still younger than Donald Trump,” Clinton said.

Clinton’s strength as an orator is not rousing a crowd but silencing it. And for stretches of his speech, the United Center listened quietly as Clinton explained his view of the election. Updating a memorable riff from his 2012 speech, Clinton tallied the number of jobs created under Democratic and Republican presidents since the end of the Cold War—a total of 51 million. “What’s the score?” he asked rhetorically, insisting he had triple-checked his claim. “Democrats: 50. Republicans: one.”

The crowd erupted, offering Clinton one of his loudest cheers. He drew a few of them last night. Alluding to his advancing years, Clinton wondered at one point how many more conventions he’ll have the chance to address. Democrats will most likely welcome him back—they always have. At the moment, however, he’s no longer the Clinton they most want to see.