No one will take the stage at the Democratic National Convention this week with more experience at the task of the Big Speech than former President Bill Clinton.
When he gets up on Wednesday night at Chicago’s United Center, it will be the 12th time he has addressed the party’s quadrennial conclave, a record of rhetoric that has gotten him dubbed the “secretary of explaining stuff.”
But the progression of those dozen speeches reflects the larger story of Mr. Clinton’s political life, a tale of boom and bust and boom again that has made him one of the most enduring figures of American life in the modern era, if not always its most universally accepted. He has gone from young rising star to tiresome bloviator to dynamic presidential nominee to popular incumbent to scandal-tarred lame duck to candidate husband to wise elder statesman, with quite a few ups and downs in between.
Mr. Clinton, who turned 78 on Monday, is the same age as former President Donald J. Trump and three years younger than President Biden, and to some extent a product of another era. His brand of moderate politics in the 1990s reshaped the Democratic Party from a perennial loser to the party that would go on to win the national popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections.
But welfare-reforming, free-trading, budget-balancing centrism is not in vogue in today’s Democratic Party, where progressive politics are more resonant. Moreover, Mr. Clinton’s history of sexual indiscretions — and allegations of even worse, although denied — look different in light of the #MeToo movement of recent years. In that sense, his presence may appear somewhat discordant at a convention devoted to electing the first woman president.
Still, it is also a convention about generational torch-passing, and Democrats hope that Mr. Clinton’s speech will help validate Vice President Kamala Harris, 59, particularly with working-class white swing voters in Midwestern and Sun Belt states who remember the 42nd president fondly and are not yet sure whether to make her the 47th.
“He broke our long presidential losing streak and built the Blue Wall by reconnecting our party with the forgotten middle class — exactly what @VP must do,” Al From, founder of the Democratic Leadership Council, a moderate group that was at the center of the Clinton movement, wrote on social media on Wednesday.
Mr. Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who addressed the convention on Monday, were not among the Democrats who pressured Mr. Biden to withdraw as a candidate after the president’s disastrous June debate with Mr. Trump. In fact, in those tumultuous days that followed, the Clintons urged angry party donors to keep giving, a move that earned Mr. Biden’s gratitude. But the Clintons were also quick to endorse Ms. Harris the moment that Mr. Biden did step aside.
While not a stirring orator like former President Barack Obama, Mr. Clinton has always been an engaging speaker, blending homespun Ozark folksiness with a command of policy and a skill for translating it into terms that everyday Americans have found compelling.
While the old political saw holds that “if you’re explaining, you’re losing” — meaning that a candidate is on the defensive — Mr. Clinton has found explaining to be a political winner.
He has attended every Democratic convention since 1972 and briefly addressed his first one in 1976 when he was asked to say a few words of praise for former President Harry S. Truman before prime time. He gave his first real speech in 1980 just days before his 34th birthday, when he was the young governor of Arkansas.
But his prime-time address formally nominating Michael S. Dukakis in 1988 was the breakout moment he wished he could have back. Mr. Clinton’s long-winded speech dragged on for so long that convention officials flashed the words “Please. Your time is up.” on the teleprompter screen and his best applause line turned out to be “in closing.”
Mr. Clinton recovered by making a self-deprecating appearance on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson and went on to win the party’s nomination and the presidency in 1992. He addressed conventions again in 1996, when he vowed to use a second term to “build a bridge to the 21st century,” and in 2000, when he sought to repair his reputation after his sex-and-lies impeachment stemming from an affair with a White House intern.
By 2012, he had achieved a more senior role in the party and his articulate speech prompted Mr. Obama to give him the “secretary of explaining stuff” sobriquet. In 2016, Mr. Clinton was the proud spouse of the nominee, Mrs. Clinton, but could not in the end help propel her over Mr. Trump. Like others, Mr. Clinton addressed the Democrats in the pandemic year of 2020 via video, looking older and making less of an impression without a crowd to connect with.
While not as much in demand on the campaign trail in recent years, he has just finished a book called “Citizen: My Life After the White House” about his post-presidency, to be released after the November election.
But on Wednesday night, the old master will find himself in front of a microphone again with his largest television audience in four years, once again explaining himself as well as his party’s candidate.
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