Clintons remain a focus in Denver
All eyes are on the couple as Hillary Clinton prepares for Tuesday speech.
DENVER -- This is not the convention the Clintons had planned.
New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is playing a supporting role, not the starring one. Former president Bill Clinton won't even be speaking in prime time.
Even so, Clinton-watching has become the mesmerizing sideshow of the Democratic National Convention that will nominate Barack Obama. Their words, actions, even body language are being parsed for clues about how aggressively they'll help the rival who shattered their dreams of moving back into the White House.
The Clintons still matter, certainly, but one key question is how much? And another: What do they want?
"Sometimes dealing with the Clintons is like dealing with Brett Favre," says Leon Panetta, Clinton's former White House chief of staff, referring to the Green Bay football legend whose on-again, off-again decision on whether to retire was a big story this summer.
"They're very good players and they've got a great record, but sometimes you're not sure what they really want."
In a procession of Democratic conventions over nearly three decades, the Clintons have been rising stars, prevailing powerhouses and breakthrough figures. He is the only Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt to win two terms in the White House. She was the most competitive female presidential contender in American history.
But Obama's nomination this week will mark "a changing of the guard," says former Democratic national chairman Don Fowler, who supported Clinton in the primaries.
In age, mind-set and technological innovation, it is a generational shift for a party now led by the junior senator from Illinois.
Associates say Bill Clinton is still steaming about his wife's loss and the damage done during the campaign to his own reputation, especially among African-American voters who had been a base of his support. He drew fire by calling Obama's meteoric rise a "fairy tale" and minimizing his South Carolina victory by likening it to those of Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988.
Bill Clinton is "taking it a little harder … because he wanted his wife to succeed and also because he wants a good Clinton legacy," says New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who was a member of Clinton's Cabinet but enraged the former president by endorsing Obama. "He's probably still upset."
Hillary Clinton, the convention's featured speaker tonight, told a New York state delegation breakfast Monday that "we are united and we are together" behind Obama's candidacy.
During a reception Wednesday, she plans to release her delegates from their commitments to vote for her at the convention.
She referred to a TV ad Republican John McCain is airing that quotes a former Clinton convention delegate as endorsing him, part of a concerted GOP effort to reach out to disaffected Clinton supporters.
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