If it made sense for Barack Obama to stage a splashy event with Hillary Clinton in a place called Unity, it might have been just as significant that his call on Monday to Bill Clinton was from a town in Missouri named Independence. For all the intrigue that had surrounded this moment, the actual conversation centered on politics, not any lingering hard feelings, sources in both camps say. The former President, who received the call at home in Chappaqua after a swing through Europe, pledged to do whatever he is asked to do to help Obama get elected. Terry McAuliffe, the Bill Clinton confidant who chaired Hillary Clinton’s campaign, says Clinton told Obama: “I’m at your disposal.”
What might that entail? Bill Clinton’s efforts on behalf of John Kerry in 2004 were late and limited–something that Kerry’s campaign took to be a slight. The only major event that Clinton did on Kerry’s behalf was a huge rally in Philadelphia seven weeks after Clinton’s quadruple bypass.
But Obama has no trouble generating mega-crowds on his own, nor does he need Clinton’s help in fundraising. Instead, says McAuliffe, it might make more sense for the Obama to deploy Bill as Hillary did, in small towns and rural areas that have never seen a political star of his magnitude in the flesh. The Obama campaign knows well how effective Bill Clinton was in bringing out the vote in these settings. One top Obama strategist told me that the reason the Illinois Senator lost the popular vote in Texas was not those now-famous 3 a.m. phone call ads, but rather, the fact the Bill was working precincts on his wife’s behalf up and down the eastern and western edges of the state.
Both the Obama campaign and Clinton’s allies downplayed the idea that the timing of the call was a response to a round of press reports about petulance on Clinton’s part. “They’ve been trying to get in touch with each other for a while,” said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton. McAuliffe noted that Hillary Clinton is “the political head of the family now,” and maintained that her appearance with Obama was the far more important event. Any delay in scheduling the conversation between the two men, he said, was out of concern that Bill not upstage Hillary’s appearance with Obama. McAuliffe also disputed reports that Bill Clinton believes Obama owes him an apology. None was offered during the phone call, McAuliffe said, “nor should there have been.”