Clinton has a role for husband
Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed Saturday to put her husband to work as a global ambassador to repair America’s image abroad if she wins the 2008 presidential election.
“I believe in using former presidents, particularly what my husband has done, to really get people around the world feeling better about our country,” Clinton told a crowd in Marshalltown, Iowa. “We’re going to need that. Right now they’re rooting against us and they need to root for us.”
Bill Clinton has agreed to “do anything I asked him to do,” the New York senator said.
The former president has played an increasingly visible role in his wife’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. He appeared with her in Selma, Ala., at the commemoration of the landmark 1965 civil rights march there. He has also starred at her fundraising events and talked to major donors on telephone conference calls amid a fierce rivalry for money with Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama, an Illinois senator.
Clinton also promoted his wife’s candidacy in an appearance Thursday on CNN’s “Larry King Live.” He told King that he was doing whatever he could for her campaign, but added: “I don’t think it’s helpful, really, for me to be out there too much now.”
When both Clintons spoke last year at the funeral of Coretta Scott King in Atlanta, the former president was widely seen as upstaging his wife with his charismatic presence. He remains a more popular figure than Hillary Clinton in polls.
In his own campaign for the presidency in 1992, Bill Clinton pledged that his wife would play a major role in his administration, telling crowds: “Buy one, get one free.” The following year, she led his administration’s failed effort to overhaul the nation’s healthcare system.
In his CNN interview last week, Bill Clinton welcomed the opportunity to serve his wife in a new Clinton administration.
“You know, I love her very much,” he said. “And I think she would be a great president. And all presidents need help. They need all the help they can get. And we’re going to have a lot of challenges. So if she asked me to do something, whatever it was, I would probably do it.”
At the same time, he added, “she’ll be the president. She’ll make the decisions.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
