Presidential campaign trail now has 2 Clintons
NASHUA, N.H. — Former President Bill Clinton made his debut solo appearance on behalf of wife Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign in New Hampshire on Monday — grayer, trimmer and far more subdued than nearly a quarter-century ago, when he rescued his flagging 1992 campaign in this key early voting state.
While Bill Clinton was keen to keep the focus on Hillary Clinton’s key campaign platforms, the passing time hasn’t shielded him from the ghosts that haunted his presidency. Republican front-runner Donald Trump has gone on the offensive in recent days with attacks over Bill Clinton’s impeachment and sex scandal.
Both Clintons aimed for higher ground, even on policy. Hillary Clinton, asked in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, about Trump’s remark that she helped create the Islamic State group, replied: “I’ve adopted a New Year’s resolution. I’m going to let him live in his alternative reality and I’m not going to respond.”
In Manchester, N.H., meanwhile, Bill Clinton mingled with a lunchtime crowd at a popular eatery while a news station playing above his head ran captioned video questioning whether he could avoid Trump’s attacks — and that’s just what he did.
“They have to choose a nominee and we have a primary to win,” he said when asked about Trump and the broader Republican field. “One of my many rules in politics is don’t look past the next election.”
In a wide-ranging address that focused on Hillary Clinton’s work as a young lawyer in Arkansas, ways to combat heroin addiction, the political achievements of President Barack Obama and the failings of America’s 14th president, Franklin Pierce, Bill Clinton argued that the Democratic front-runner offers the best plan to restore “broadly shared prosperity.”
The two-term president seemed in his element making small talk and posing for dozens of photos.
Denise McMann, who was having lunch at the eatery with her three sisters, said: “I’m not supporting his wife. But he was the former president, so it’s exciting.”
The event was part of a broader strategy by Bill Clinton to boost Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the run-up to early voting next month.
At another New Hampshire stop, Bill Clinton said: “I do not believe in my lifetime anybody has run for this job at a moment of great importance who was better qualified by knowledge, experience and temperament to do what needs to be done now.”
Trump was on the offensive ahead of Bill Clinton’s campaign debut, raising concern over the former president’s scandals and any role his wife played.
“I don’t really care about Monica Lewinsky other than I think that Hillary was an enabler and a lot of things happened that were obviously very seedy,” Trump said in an interview with CNN Monday. “I mean, he was impeached, for heaven’s sake.”
In 1998, the House voted to impeach, or formally accuse, then-President Clinton of perjury and obstruction. In 1999, the Senate acquitted him.
Meanwhile, Bill Clinton’s longstanding ability to raise money will likely be an asset in the weeks ahead, with fundraisers on the calendar in New York, Seattle, Phoenix, Albuquerque, N.M., Cleveland and Fairfield, Conn. The couple’s daughter, Chelsea, is also getting into the act, headlining fundraisers of her own in Boston, Atlanta and Chicago next week.