Free Bill Clinton

CHICAGO — It’s time to take the big dog off the porch and let him run.

Bill Clinton should return to the campaign trail this fall and do what he does best: articulate to Americans why they should vote for Democrats.

It's what Clinton plans to do in his remarks Wednesday night, same as he has at every Democratic convention for over three decades. And it’s how he could best help the party going into November.

Running what’s effectively a snap election with a ticket that, between them, has competed in a single, Covid-shaped national campaign, the party has an incentive to summon every possible asset to fend off Donald Trump.

As buoyant as so many at the convention are about their sudden change of fate after a summer from hell, it’s not hard to detect an underlying measure of concern about whether the moment can last. It's not quite fatalism, but, as at the end of the late-night parties here, there’s a creeping sense that the alarm bell is going to go off in a couple of hours.

And few Democrats know that it’s not just joy that cometh in the morning than those who have been on the ballot.

Just this week, I had two Pennsylvania Democratic officeholders separately raise with me how much they wanted Bill Clinton in their oh-so-competitive state to help deliver it for Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

“President Clinton has been one of our party's most effective messengers, and he needs to get back out there to explain why the Harris-Walz ticket's economic policies will be better for working-class families across Pennsylvania,” said Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, who suggested Clinton take a bus through the state’s mid-sized cities and towns where Democrats must break even or mitigate Trump’s margin.

Davis, a former state lawmaker from near Pittsburgh, said Clinton “has a unique ability to reach old-school, yellow dog Democratic voters, especially in communities like Erie, Sharon and Uniontown."

Across the state, Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), a Philadelphian, was just as emphatic.

“Bill Clinton is one of the greatest political talents in the history of the Democratic Party,” Boyle told me. “In an election that is existential for our democracy, we need all hands on deck, including Bubba’s.”

Boyle’s plea is particularly notable because he knows well what it’s like to go up against the Clintons: He won the 2014 primary for his House seat by beating former Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, Chelsea Clinton’s mother-in-law.

Yes, Clinton just turned 78. Mavis Staples helped serenade him at a birthday party here.

The former president does not have the capacity to stump like he did in all those small towns for Hillary Clinton in 2008, and he may not be as adept as “the Secretary of Explaining Stuff,” as Barack Obama dubbed him in 2012, as when Clinton used Obama’s renominating convention to deliver a tour de force.

And all the Democrats I spoke to are aware of the risks. That Clinton could show rust on his return to the campaign trail. That it would be insensitive to female voters given Clinton’s history of allegations of mistreatment of women. And that he'd finger-wag to reporters on the rope line when confronted with topics like, say, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

Those who have seen Clinton up close this year say he has aged noticeably and may not be able to sustain a robust schedule. The master communicator, some fear, is not what he once was.

But the urgency, bordering on desperation, to stop Trump has many Democrats saying without hesitation that it’s worth the risk to Free Willie.

“He’s the master at connecting with voters,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul told me. “Not just the Democratic base, but he has the crossover appeal to talk to independents, guys in VFW halls, firemen.”

Especially with the sort of older voters, who remember an earlier politics that didn’t cause people to hate their neighbors and boycott a family thanksgiving, Hochul said Clinton could remind them of a “pre-Trump era” that she called a relative “golden age of politics.”

As for Clinton’s transgressions, Hochul dismissed them in light of Trump’s misconduct and various charges.

Pointing to Hillary Clinton’s well-turned convention speech Monday, Hochul added, "Do not underestimate the power of Hillary,” suggesting the former secretary of State could also be an effective surrogate when deployed wisely.

Harris is grateful for the Clintons’ early support — she talked to both of them the Sunday last month that President Joe Biden dropped out and both endorsed her within hours — and I think would (strategically) welcome their help.

Mitch Landrieu, the former New Orleans mayor who got to know Harris working as the White House’s infrastructure czar, said it was a no-brainer.

“He’s the best retail politician in America,” said Landrieu. “Whenever or however, as far as I’m concerned.”

It’s an irony of history that there’s a growing nostalgia for the Clinton era. And it’s not just coming from Democrats. I’ve heard from Republicans in recent years tell me how much they pine for the centrist policies and relatively tame politics of the 1990s. That Clinton was the first president to be impeached since Andrew Johnson is conveniently airbrushed out of these recollections.

I asked somebody quite familiar with this period about such rose-tinted recollections.

“We were on recess from history,” former Speaker Newt Gingrich told me. “The Cold War was over. We thought we were a hegemon. We had an economy that was clearly the most powerful in the world and a military nobody could compete with.”

So, WWND — What Would Newt Do (if he was running the Democratic campaign)?

He didn’t hesitate.

“Had Al Gore allowed Clinton to campaign the way he could have, Al Gore would have won the presidency,” said Gingrich, reminding Democrats of all those if-only-Bubba-had-been-unleashed-in Arkansas what-ifs from 2000.

Unable to resist the temptation to play strategist, he continued.

“If I was them, and if they want to penetrate working- class voters, I can’t think of anybody they have with greater potential than Bill Clinton,” said Gingrich.