Clinton Is Up and About to Hit Trail

October 25, 2004
THE FORMER PRESIDENT

Clinton Is Up and About to Hit Trail

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
 
WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 - With the drama of an injured player coming off the bench in the final moments of the big game, Bill Clinton is emerging Monday just seven weeks after quadruple bypass surgery to campaign for Senator John Kerry.

 With only nine days until an election that is too close to call, the former president is headed for two of the biggest battlegrounds, Pennsylvania and Florida. He is scheduled to appear at a rally with Mr. Kerry in Philadelphia at lunchtime on Monday and a rally in Miami before dinner. He also has an event scheduled for Broward County, Fla., on Tuesday.

 "Senator Kerry asked me to do it, and I want to do it,'' Mr. Clinton told Diane Sawyer in an interview to be broadcast Monday on the ABC program "Good Morning America.'' "Because it's close and because I think it's important and because the differences between the two candidates and the courses they'll pursue in the next four years are so profound.''

 Other events are possible, but aides to Mr. Kerry said they were taking it one day at a time to see how Mr. Clinton held up. It is not clear how robust a performance he will be able to deliver on the stump or whether he will be able to engage in the glad-handing for which he is famous.

 "How much of a travel schedule he can have is not clear at this point,'' Mike McCurry, a senior Kerry spokesman who was Mr. Clinton's press secretary in the White House, told reporters.

 Mr. Clinton's immediate task in Philadelphia is to light a fire under black voters, but his broader goal is to remind all voters that the economic prosperity of the 1990's, with its 23 million new jobs and $5.6 trillion budget surplus, occurred under his Democratic administration.

 "What the former president does is offer them a very stark reminder of where this country was just four years ago, in a unique way that only he can articulate,'' Joe Lockhart, also a senior spokesman for Mr. Kerry and a former spokesman for Mr. Clinton, said in a conference call with reporters.

 Friends said that Mr. Clinton, 58, was recovering well from his operation on Sept. 6 but that the convalescence was gradual and going more slowly than he had expected. He takes walks around his home in Chappaqua, N.Y., has had visitors and speaks regularly by phone with Mr. Kerry.

 "Recovering is a multimonth process,'' one friend said, adding that Mr. Clinton had lost a considerable amount of weight. "He can tire easily,'' another said, noting that this was normal after such a major operation.

 Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York told a radio station last week that her husband had "taken seriously all of the advice the doctors have given him.''

 "He's been a much more patient patient than I would have ever guessed,'' Mrs. Clinton said. "He's doing really well.''

 Mr. Clinton was sidelined during the 2000 campaign by Al Gore, the nominee, who perceived him to be a liability because of the Monica Lewinsky episode, which led to his impeachment.

 But the Kerry campaign has no such qualms. Since impeachment, and several questionable pardons he made as he left office, Mr. Clinton has published his memoir, which became a best seller, and polls suggest that he has rehabilitated his image.

 A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll last week showed him with a 48 percent positive rating and a 38 percent negative rating, which is higher than the ratings for either President Bush or Mr. Kerry.

 His ratings were even higher among independents, swing voters and those who had not yet committed to a candidate, precisely the voters the Kerry campaign hopes he can reach this week.

 Mr. Clinton has a history of doing well in Pennsylvania. He broke a Republican lock on the heavily Republican Philadelphia suburbs in 1992. Speculation about Mr. Clinton's postelection plans mounted last week when United Press International reported that he was interested in becoming secretary general of the United Nations after Kofi Annan's term ends in 2006.

 In response, Jim Kennedy, a spokesman for Mr. Clinton, said only, "The only campaigning I'm aware of is for John Kerry.''

 If Mr. Bush is re-elected, such a prominent post for a political adversary would be out of the question. But even if Mr. Kerry were elected, no American has ever served as secretary general, and it is widely regarded to be Asia's turn next to supply a leader for the world body.

 The next big date on Mr. Clinton's calendar is in mid-November, when he plans a weeklong ceremony for the opening of the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Ark.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/politics/campaign/25clinton.html