Bill Clinton's campaign role unmatched in recent history
(CBS News) Former President Bill Clinton's 49-minute speech at the Democratic National Convention last week was so well-received that even Mitt Romney called it a stand-out performance that helped "elevate" the Democratic convention. Now the Obama campaign is hoping to keep that magic alive, dispatching Mr. Clinton on the campaign trail by himself this week on behalf of President Obama.
Mr. Clinton's campaigning, which includes solo stops in Miami and Orlando, Fla., may be unprecedented when it comes to campaign surrogacy from former or outgoing presidents -- at least in the last 100 years. The former president's stops are not only high profile, but also potentially very impactful, given the level of credibility he has with the public on the economy and job creation.
"Bill Clinton is probably the greatest single surrogate a candidate has had running for president in a long time, maybe in the whole 20th century," presidential historian Doug Brinkley told CBSNews.com. "And this year, it's all about jobs, jobs, jobs. Clinton has the record to match his rhetoric."
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On Tuesday, Mr. Clinton will hold an event at Florida International University in Miami. Then on Wednesday, he makes a campaign stop at the Rosen Plaza in Orlando. At both events, the former president will discuss the choice between Mr. Obama's economic vision and Romney's. The Obama campaign argues that Mr. Clinton oversaw the nation's longest period of economic expansion by pursuing many of the same economic policies Mr. Obama is pursuing now.
"There's no one better than President Clinton to lay out the clear choice Americans face in this election between moving forward with President Obama, or falling backward with Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, who support the same failed policies that led to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression," campaign spokesman Adam Fetcher told CBSNews.com
According to Brinkley, the last time a former or outgoing president had the chance to make this much of an impact on the campaign trail was in 1908, when Theodore Roosevelt campaigned for William Howard Taft. Ronald Reagan, for instance -- another president with high job approval ratings upon leaving office -- went back to California after moving out of the Oval Office. Whether it was due to his age, his health or the speculated lack of enthusiasm he had for George H.W. Bush's candidacy, Reagan wasn't a prominent surrogate on the trail for his successor.
Clinton, meanwhile, hasn't had the opportunity in past elections to act as a prominent surrogate.
"In the year 2000, Al Gore didn't want to be in the same photo frame as Bill Clinton," Brinkley remarked, noting the stigma Clinton carried from the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which broke in 1998. "Because Gore lost by just a hair, the conventional wisdom started saying Gore made a mistake -- that he should've used Bill Clinton, that he still had great box office appeal with middle-class Americans. Since then, Bill Clinton's been a coveted endorsement."
Then in 2004, Clinton was largely absent from the trail after undergoing heart surgery in September. He did eventually campaign for John Kerry, but this year, Brinkley said, "is really the first time since Clinton's left the presidency that he's unhinged and working at 100 percent, high-octane energy for the leader of his party."
Mr. Obama joked over the weekend that Mr. Clinton is such an effective surrogate that he could serve as "secretary of explaining stuff." Part of his success as a surrogate comes from having a receptive audience -- unlike Mr. Obama, Mr. Clinton has high favorability ratings among both men and women, both white voters and non-white voters, across all age groups and among independents. His overall favorability rating stands at 69 percent, according to the most recent Gallup poll, and he even wins a 43 percent favorability rating among Republicans.
"It's not just that he was a popular politician, but he represents American prosperity incarnate," Brinkley said. "When he says, 'Here's how we're going to get America going again, we've got to follow what Barack Obama is doing, it takes a little while, but it's going to work' -- that's very persuasive."
The Romney campaign and its supporters argue that Mr. Clinton's own stellar economic record should stand in sharp relief to Mr. Obama's record.
While Romney said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that Mr. Clinton's DNC speech elevated the event, he also said, "The contrast may not have been as attractive as Barack Obama might have preferred if he were choosing who'd go before him and who'd go after him."
