... and Bill would be the First Gentleman

The former US president casts aside image of himself as ageing campaign trail companion with impactful, intimate speech about his life with Hillary Clinton

‘In the spring of 1971, I met a girl...” So began Bill Clinton’s invitation to pull up a chair by the fire and listen to a love story on Tuesday night as he recalled his life with Hillary – and the fact that he had to ask her three times before she agreed to marry him. US President Barack Obama, he noted, also had to keep asking before she agreed to become his secretary of state.

Now, Clinton argued, it is time for America to finally give in and fall in love with Hillary.

With a spring in his step as he walked to the podium, the 42nd president delivered a warm and, on occasion, awkwardly intimate speech to the Democratic national convention that praised Hillary as a “change-maker” and reminded the party why he ultimately represents more of an asset to his wife than a liability.

To admirers, Bill Clinton – who turns 70 next month – is draped in the mantle of the peaceful and prosperous 1990s, a prelapsarian world without 9/11. To detractors, he carries the stench of political calculation and sex scandals. And on the campaign trail these days he is an ageing champion, older, greyer and leaner, a diminished and somewhat undisciplined force prone to the odd gaffe.

But in this, his 10th address to a Democratic convention delivered to thousands of delegates waving red, white and blue “America” signs, he had surer footing. The policy master, who four years ago was dubbed economic “explainer in chief”, found himself in the very traditional role of a would-be first spouse humanising a wouldbe president for the nation. For once, it wasn’t about him, and he managed to stay on script.

“The first time I saw her we were, appropriately enough, in a class on political and civil rights,” he recalled. “She had thick blond hair, big glasses, wore no make-up, and she had a sense of strength and self-possession that I found magnetic. After the class I followed her out, intending to introduce myself. I got close enough to touch her back, but I couldn’t do it. Somehow I knew this would not be just another tap on the shoulder, that I might be starting something I couldn’t stop.”

His first marriage proposal, in Britain’s Lake District, was rejected. “So the second time I tried a different tack. I said I really want you to marry me, but you shouldn’t do it.” Finally, Clinton took the gamble of buying a house in Arkansas that she liked. “The third time was the charm.”

He recalled: “We were married in that little house on October 11, 1975. I married my best friend. I was still in awe after more than four years of being around her at how smart and strong and loving and caring she was. And I really hoped that her choosing me and rejecting my advice to pursue her own career was a decision she would never regret.”

Clinton became attorney general and Hillary started a group called the Arkansas Advocates for Families and Children. In 1979, he became governor and asked her to chair a rural health committee. On February 27, 1980, he said, “Hillary’s water broke and off we went to the hospital” – surely the first time such an anatomical detail has been revealed about a presidential nominee.