Philadelphia
(CNN)Hillary Clinton is calling on her biggest advocate Tuesday night.
When former President Bill Clinton takes the stage in Philadelphia he'll
do so this time embracing his new …
Bill Clinton embraces role of political spouse
Bill Clinton to give key DNC speech 02:43
Story highlights
- He has embraced his role as Hillary Clinton's political surrogate
- Clinton will address the convention at 10 p.m. Tuesday
Philadelphia (CNN)Hillary Clinton is calling on her biggest advocate Tuesday night.
When former President Bill Clinton takes the stage in Philadelphia he'll embrace his new supporting role as a political spouse.
Bill Clinton to give key DNC speech 02:43
Clinton
aides tell CNN he is writing a very personal speech, making the case
for his wife being a "change agent" over the course of her career.
It's an argument he's been making as he criss-crosses the country on the campaign trail.
"I've known her for 45 years," Clinton said in Los Angeles in June. "She's the best change-maker I ever knew."
Bill
Clinton brings to the convention stage rock star status within the
Democratic Party, with a unique ability to fire up the base and turn out
voters. He holds a much higher favorability rating than his wife, among
Democratic voters 79% view him favorably.
He
has turned into a frequent target for Donald Trump, who has railed
about the former President's personal life from the campaign trail.
"She's
married to a man who is the worst abuser of women in the history of
politics. She's married to a man who hurt many women," Trump said at a
rally in Spokane, Washington. "And Hillary was an enabler and she
treated these women horribly. Just remember this. And some of those
women were destroyed not by him, but by the way Hillary Clinton treated
them after everything went down."
Trump has also seized on Clinton-era policy issues, going after NAFTA, which Trump has vowed to renegotiate.
"She
doesn't understand trade," Trump said. "Her husband signed perhaps in
the history of the world the single worst trade deal ever done."
Bill Clinton has also faced scrutiny over his legislative record directly from voters on the campaign trail.
In
April he was confronted at a campaign event for his wife in
Philadelphia by Black Lives Matter activists over his administration's
1994 crime bill.
"You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter," Clinton pushed back from the podium.
On
the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton has tried to distance herself from
her husband, repeating regularly that she is running on her own record,
not "running for her husband's third term" -- as she likes to say at
campaign events.
But she has had to
clean up after him at times -- most recently in the aftermath of Bill
Clinton's private, impromptu meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch
at the Phoenix airport in June. The meeting was then widely criticized
given that the attorney general was overseeing the investigation into
Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of
state.
"I think, you know,
hindsight is 20/20," Hillary Clinton said of the meeting in an interview
with NBC News. "Both the attorney general and my husband have said they
wouldn't do it again, even though it was from all accounts that I have
heard and seen, an exchange of pleasantries. But obviously no one wants
to see any untoward conclusions drawn, and they've said, you know, they
would not do it again."
Still, Hillary Clinton sees her husband as an asset.
She
has pledged to give him a role in a potential second Clinton
administration dealing with the economy, trying to capitalize on her
husband's economic record while he was in the White House.
"My
husband, who I'm going to put in charge of revitalizing the economy,"
Clinton said in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, this May. "You know he knows
how to do it, especially in places like coal country and inner cities
and other parts of our country that have really been left out."
Bill
Clinton will still be entering on unchartered waters in a potential
Clinton White House, becoming potentially the first man to fill the role
-- pioneering a new title.
Hillary Clinton has suggested in lieu of "first lady" -- he could be called "first dude, the first mate, the first gentlemen."
Bill Clinton has suggested "first laddie."
"I
don't know, I don't really know because it'd be such a precedent,"
Clinton said of a potential title. "I don't care what I'm called, it's
more abo
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