Barnwell, South Carolina
Bill Clinton began his Thursday afternoon in an auditorium in Walterboro. It looked like the type of small structure a rural high school might have built in the 1960s, with thick green velvet drapes closed halfway across the stage and about 325 seats. When Clinton took the stage, the room was barely two-thirds full.

Two interesting things happened over the course of Clinton's four appearances on Thursday: At each stop, the crowds grew smaller and Clinton's speeches grew longer. He began the morning speaking for only 15 minutes before taking questions. By the end of the day, his opening remarks clocked in at 40 minutes.

In Walterboro, Clinton rang the usual economic bells: shrinking middle-class; collapsing housing market; predatory lenders. There were, however, two points of interest. The first was a passing, if unacknowledged, reference to Phillip Longman's thesis that the VA hospital system should be examined as a model of efficiency. The second was a hint of what Hillary Clinton's WPA for bloggers might look like.

Senator Clinton has long touted a plan to make blogs part of the federal government. Her husband expanded on the idea saying, "She thought that every government department and every federal agency . . . should have a permanently operating blog site where people can continuously write in and ask questions and have conversations." Twenty-four hours a day. It's a triumph of the New Media.

In the closing minutes at Walterboro, Clinton began to find his touch. Asked about how his wife might help

The audience chuckled; this reaction seemed to spark something in Clinton.

BY THE TIME HE arrived at the Barnwell Elementary School's auditorium 80 minutes later, not even the fact that the room was half empty could suppress the old Clinton magic. He opened with an amazing bit of testimony to his wife:

"We met in 1971," he said. "And I always say . . . that if we had never been married . . . if I had known the work she's done . . . knowing what I know about the demands of the presidency and the challenges we all face at this time, if she called me and asked me to come campaign for her, and we'd never been married, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Because I do believe she's the best qualified person I've ever had the chance to vote for for president."

It was vintage Clinton. He shined on more of it later when discoursing on who his wife might select as a running mate. He explained that there are three modern formulas for vice presidential selection--(1) a ticket balancer, a la Carter and Mondale; (2) the guy who finished second, a la Reagan and Bush; and (3) "Someone who is in the same philosophical line of thought that you are, but who knows different things than you." Here, he pointed to his selection of Al Gore. Clinton allowed that when he first ran for the White House, his areas of expertise included "economics and education and health care and international trade." Whereas Gore was an expert in "defense and weapons systems and technology and global warming."