President Clinton Stumps for His Wife

PORTLAND, MAINE — President Clinton, refraining from directly mentioning either Senator Obama or the finances of his wife's campaign, is making the case for Senator Clinton's election to the presidency on the basis of specific policy positions – on education, health care and the economy.

Mr. Clinton also raised the specter of an unpredictable crisis in arguing that his wife was the best person to be president. Mr. Clinton's comments came at event three days prior to Maine's February 10 Democratic caucuses, at which 24 delegates are stake. The Maine caucuses, while an afterthought in a typical presidential election cycle, take on more weight in a tight nomination fight in which every delegate counts. Governor Romney, who suspending his campaign yesterday, won the Republican caucuses on February 2.

As in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, Mrs. Clinton will rely heavily on institutional backers for her political organization. She has the backing of the state's governor, David Baldacci, who introduced Mr. Clinton last night. Mrs. Clinton began running television ads on the issue of the economy, an important subject in Maine, and Mr. Obama has radio ads telling voters how to participate in caucuses and featuring snippets of Senator Kennedy's endorsement.

Mr. Clinton spoke at length about the economy but near the end of his remarks hinted at the consequences of a lack of experience on the part of a candidate. "Sometime in the next first 12 to 24 months, something's going to happen that we're not talking about," Mr. Clinton said, noting that nobody asked the current president or his opponent, Vice President Gore, about a number of crises when they were running.

"No one asked them about 9/11, no one asked them about Katrina, no one asked them what are you going to do if Benazir Bhutto is tragically killed and Pakistan is a nuclear power…but when those things happen you have got to deal with them and if you don't they will sweep you away."

The argument was reminiscent of one made by Mr. Clinton's 1992 opponent, George H.W. Bush, who in the 1992 campaign asked American voters at a debate "if in the next 5 minutes a television announcer came on and said, there is a major international crisis — there is a major threat to the world or in this country a major threat — my question is, who, if you were appointed to name 1 of the 3 of us, who would you choose?"

When Mr. Clinton launched into a discussion of international opinion of America, a heckler began shouting about the Iraq War. "Would you like to make this speech?" Mr. Clinton asked the heckler. When Mr. Clinton scolded the man, saying "Sir, this is not your event, this is for Hillary," the crowd erupted into applause.

Mr. Clinton did not talk about the $5 million his wife loaned her campaign. He did make reference to his financial position in a discussion of ending tax cuts on the top 1% of the population, a group to which he said he now belongs. "For most of my life, I didn't have a nickel to my name," he said. "I had the lowest net worth of any president in the 20th century, when I went in. When I left, you might remember, I had even less."

Mr. Obama's supporters have high hopes for Maine. Mr. Obama, a former community organizer, has thrived in states where a relatively small number of energized activists have a magnified impact. In addition, Maine, which had a governor aligned with neither major political party, has a reputation for having an independent streak in politics.

The state chairman of Mr. Obama's campaign, Robert Monks, said of his candidate: "Maine's a poor state and there are a lot of people who want to feel hope and he projects that. He also projects a kind of new way which resonates with Maine because we tend to be so independent."

For a local political observer, a government professor at Bowdoin College, Christian Potholm, competitive presidential caucuses represented a significant happening. "I don't think that Maine would become so important. This is huge," Mr. Potholm said. He added, "The Clinton people are pulling out all the stops."

In an election year that has pitted key Democratic constituencies against each other, with women and Latinos supportive of Mrs. Clinton and African-Americans for Mr. Obama, an unlikely ethnic group may emerge to make the difference in the caucuses, the largely blue collar French Canadian population which inhabits the aging mill towns of Maine's interior, such as Biddeford, Saco and Westbrook.

"The key will be Franco-American Democrats, who tend to be conservative Democrats," Mr. Potholm said. "If they desert Clinton and go to Obama that would be a huge story."