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Bill Clinton waxes about Hillary while in Iowa

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By Dan Gearino | Monday, December 10, 2007 |

AMES, Iowa — Former President Bill Clinton took an Iowa audience back more than three decades on Monday, explaining why he found his wife so special when they met and why he thinks those same qualities would make her a great president.

“I want to say a few things that are very personal today,” he said.

He spoke in a packed theater at Iowa State University, the first of seven stops over two days for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Bill Clinton recalled meeting Hillary at Yale Law School. He said she was a celebrity of sorts on campus because of media coverage of her anti-establishment graduation speech at Wellesley College.

“I thought she was the most gifted person in our generation,” he said.

He said Hillary could have easily taken a job with a top law firm in Chicago or New York, but instead chose a series of community-minded pursuits with much lower pay and less prestige.

He said he once told her she would be smart to dump him and enter politics on her own.

“She laughed at me and said, ’First, I love you, and second, I’m not going to run for anything. I’m too hardheaded.’ ”

He said it’s funny when people accuse his wife of being calculating, because her life story is one of repeated personal sacrifice. He implied that one of her sacrifices was deciding to move to Arkansas and marry him.

“I was a defeated candidate for Congress with a $26,000 salary and a $42,000 campaign debt,” he said.

With about three weeks left before the Jan. 3 caucuses, Hillary Clinton, a U.S. senator from New York, is in a close race with U.S. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and former senator John Edwards of North Carolina. Bill Clinton’s trip to the state falls just two days after Obama brought his own superstar supporter, Oprah Winfrey.

Virginia Ricke, a retired teacher from Ames, said she was moved by Bill Clinton’s speech.

“You can’t do any better than Bill. He’s great,” she said.

The Ames audience had to wait almost an hour because Clinton’s flight was delayed. Campaign staff bought doughnuts for the waiting crowd.

“They told me you got doughnuts when I couldn’t get down,” Clinton said when he took the stage. “One of these folks on the way in said you should’ve waited another hour and we could’ve had barbecue.“

Dan Gearino can be contacted at (515) 243-0138 and dan.gearino@lee.net.