Bill Clinton: Obama is ready

Former president tells convention he knows Democratic candidate is man for job

By Mark Z. Barabak and Jim Tankersley | Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune

August 28, 2008

DENVER - Former President Bill Clinton punctuated the Democrats' nomination of Barack Obama yesterday with the declaration that the first black standard-bearer of a major party "is ready to be president of the United States."

He wrapped Obama in his unqualified embrace. "Everything I learned in my eight years as president and in the work I have done since, in America and across the globe, has convinced me that Barack Obama is the man for this job," Clinton said.

Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, echoed the praise in accepting his vice presidential nomination.

"These times require more than a good soldier - they require a wise leader," he said, in excepts of his remarks released before delivery. "A leader who can deliver change. The change everybody knows we need.

"Barack Obama will deliver that change."

Obama's formal nomination came in a choreographed minuet that followed weeks of to-the-wire negotiations between the Clinton and Obama camps.

After Hillary Clinton moved to suspend the roll call and nominate Obama by acclamation, the crowd took up a chant of "Hillary," which gave way to "Obama" and "Yes, we can" before the crowd approved the motion with a roaring "aye."

Venom for John McCain soon replaced the cheering.

Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island called McCain the "cheerleader in chief" for the Iraq war. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada called the Arizona senator a snake oil salesman and, in an apparent dig at his age, "kindly old Doc McCain."

Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the 2004 Democratic nominee who considered McCain for his running mate, offered a fiery, self-mocking contrast between McCain's "myth of a maverick" and his "reality of a politician."

"Candidate McCain now supports the wartime tax cuts that Senator McCain once denounced as immoral," Kerry said. "Candidate McCain criticizes Senator McCain's own climate change bill. Candidate McCain says he would now vote against the immigration bill that Senator McCain wrote.

"Are you kidding? Talk about being for it before you're against it."

Biden began his speech by telling his story of growing up in middle-class neighborhoods of Scranton, Pa., and Wilmington, Del. But he, too, soon moved on to slamming McCain, particularly on the Iraq war, which McCain supported at the start and Obama opposed.

"John McCain was wrong," Biden said. "Barack Obama was right."

Seizing on the Democrats' theme of "securing America's future," the McCain campaign launched a new TV ad that challenges Obama's record on foreign policy and declares him "dangerously unprepared to be president."

Many Democrats accused Bill Clinton of fueling those attacks this summer by failing, under direct questioning, to say Obama was prepared for the job. Yesterday, he drew on his own campaign experience to leave no doubt.

"Republicans said I was too young and too inexperienced to be commander in chief," Clinton said. "Sound familiar? It didn't work in 1992, because we were on the right side of history. And it won't work in 2008, because Barack Obama is on the right side of history."

The crowd greeted Bill Clinton with a sustained ovation, screaming and waving American flags for several minutes until he begged, "Please stop."

He offered a proud nod to his wife: "She never quit on the people she stood up for." And when the room began to chant the Obama slogan, "Yes, we can," he embraced the words of her former rival.

"Yes, we can," he said, "but first we have to elect him."