Clinton’s ‘Chill Out’ Comment Was Wife’s Idea, Friend Says

It was the line of the night, the sound bite of choice in Thursday’s Democratic debate in Dallas on ABC--Bill Clinton telling Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. to “chill out.” It sounded spontaneous. But like most seemingly extemporaneous moments in presidential debates, this one was also hatched beforehand.

The strategy was born just before the debate, when the Arkansas governor’s wife, Hillary, came over to him, straightened out his lapel and looked him in the eyes, according to Austin, Tex., lawyer Bill Burton, a friend who was in the room.

“Bill, look,” Burton recalled her saying. “If Jerry Brown goes off on some wild tangent against you, just remind him he’s from California and what they say out there is, chill out. Just tell him to chill out.”

Hillary Clinton watched the debate on a TV monitor at the studio. When her husband said what she had told him to, she laughed along with everyone else in the room.