FOUR years ago when Barack Obama’s re-election was not a sure thing, a lacklustre Democratic National Convention in Charlotte was transformed by a long but mesmerising speech by Bill Clinton, arguing that Mr Obama had not enjoyed enough credit for saving the American economy from disaster. A grateful Mr Obama dubbed Mr Clinton his “Secretary for Explaining Stuff”.
On July 26th Mr Clinton took up the mantle of explainer-in-chief once more, but for his wife who hours earlier had been voted the Democratic presidential nominee. His task was harder this time. Four years ago Mr Clinton drew on his credibility as the president who presided over an economic boom to tell voters that Mr Obama had inherited problems so grave that he could not be expected to fix them all in a single term. Put simply, he was offering his expert view on a successor’s expertise.
In 2016—to quote a political leader of the campaign to pull Britain out of the European Union—voters “have had enough of experts”. That is especially dangerous for Mrs Clinton. At worst many voters think she is a crook who cannot be trusted. At best, loyal Democratic voters typically say that they are not excited by her.
In a bid to convince the country that his wife is a caring as well as a clever woman, Mr Clinton combined folksy story-telling with patient exposition. “In the spring of 1971 I met a girl,” he began. They met in a class at Yale on civil rights, he recalled. She was “magnetic”.
There was politics in Mr Clinton’s decade-old memories, as when he described driving his future wife home to her family in suburban Illinois, and waxed lyrical about its post-war prosperity, public parks and swimming pools (though almost all the residents were white, he added). “Hillary opened my eyes to a whole new world of public service by private citizens,” he went on, describing the young Hillary Rodham making an undercover mission in 1972 to a segregated school in the Deep South, posing as a parent. He talked of Mrs Clinton registering Hispanic voters in South Texas, travelling to South Carolina to investigate why so many black teenagers were being jailed with adult men, then moving to Arkansas to work as a lawyer and advocate for children. “Always making things better,” he marvelled.
Daring the crowd to lose interest, the former president told stories about his wife holding a listening tour of all 75 counties of Arkansas to investigate pre-school education. But all the folksiness was building up to a point. Mr Clinton told the convention he wanted them to leave understanding one thing above all. If the country is anxious and unhappy and longing for change: “She’s the best darn change-maker I have ever met in my entire life.” Change is hard and can be boring, he went on. Giving speeches is fun, but “doing the work is hard.”
He offered a paean to his wife’s skills working with conservative Republicans during his presidency. He told a story that is a staple of his on the 2016 campaign trail about his wife, as First Lady, working on a bill to make fostering children easier with one of his harshest Republican critics in Congress, Tom DeLay of Texas. Mrs Clinton knew that Mr DeLay had fostered children, and respected that, he explained.
Playing to national-security hawks dismayed by Mr Trump’s isolationism, Mr Clinton argued that as secretary of state his wife worked hard to get strong sanctions on Iran's nuclear programme. Playing to progressives, he hailed her as an advocate for action on climate change and gay rights. “Nobody ever talks about this much,” he went on, but his wife tripled the number of AIDS patients in poor countries helped by America, by buying generic drugs.
How could these stories be squared with the horrors told about his wife at the Republican National Convention, he asked? Well: “One is real, the other is made up.”
Why do Republicans attack his wife so harshly, he asked rhetorically? Mr Clinton offered one last explanation, spiced with a dose of conspiracy theory. Because Republicans present government as a menace, he said: “A real change-maker represents a real threat.”
Earlier in the evening the power of patient exposition was demonstrated in another way, as a suddenly-united convention stopped booing and squabbling and formally nominated Mrs Clinton by a deafening voice vote, called for by her chief rival, the left-wing populist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. That moment—with a snowy-haired Mr Sanders blinking back tears as delegates roared “Aye”—marked a big change since the convention’s opening night, on July 25th, which began with die-hard “Bernie-or-Bust” delegates howling their disapproval of Mrs Clinton, at every mention of her name. In part, the new-found unity of the convention was the result of Mr Sanders and his team lobbying their own supporters to accept that the primary contest was over. Mr Sanders, who was himself booed on the first day of the convention, began the second day by popping in to a breakfast for the noisiest state delegation, from California, at which he told supporters it was “imperative” to elect Mrs Clinton. “It’s easy to boo, but it is harder to look your kids in the face who would be living under a Donald Trump presidency,” he told the Californians.
But perhaps as usefully, the theatre of a state-by-state roll-call vote simply demonstrated to delegates in Philadelphia that there had been a contest which Mr Sanders had lost. Scattered boos could still be heard, and a pair of delegates held up banners alleging “Electoral Fraud”. But the mood had changed. This was a party preparing for election.
Beyond Mr Clinton’s speech the whole four-day Democratic convention is being dedicated to explaining a woman who many Americans are convinced they already know too well. Yes, Mrs Clinton is a policy wonk, her team has decided to say, but that is how she expresses love. Throughout the second evening, short films showed the new nominee listening to Americans tell her about the strains of looking after sick children while holding down a job, discussing health care with voters or hearing the stories of “Mothers of the Movement”, seven black women whose children died in police custody or shot while unarmed in circumstances that campaigners call vigilante violence. More than once, members of the public seen on films then appeared on stage to testify to Mrs Clinton’s compassionate and sincere interest in their woes. The intention was clear. In an election season in which voters disdain experience and have not punished Donald Trump for making vague or impossible promises unbuttressed by policy details, the Democrats are trying to make Mrs Clinton’s swottish temperament and years in public service into evidence of a big heart.
Will this work? Mr Clinton is a fine speaker and explainer of things. But is he tackling the right problem? He sounded consumed with frustration that his wife does not get enough credit for her tireless desire to fix things. But critics do not think his wife is lazy, or stupid. They think she is a crooked schemer, and a big-government liberal who wants to tax them, regulate business into ruin and take away Americans’ guns. They think her record is cram-full of achievements—but terrible ones.
This election year millions of voters think the system of government is rigged and operates for their benefit of Others. Mr Trump is offering to smash the system and wall off or expel those Others. Mrs Clinton is offering more, better, wiser government. Mr Clinton is an eloquent defender of his wife. But in stressing her work ethic and brains he may be defending her against the wrong charge.