US: He looked a little pale and hollow-cheeked, and his voice was somewhat subdued but former president Bill Clinton still exuded a powerful sense of presence when he walked onto the stage at an outdoor rally for John Kerry in Philadelphia yesterday, writes Conor O'Clery in Philadelphia
"They call me the comeback kid," Clinton told the crowd, packed densely along a wide, tree-lined boulevard on a chilly, gray day.
"Well in eight days John Kerry is going to make America the comeback country."
The former president was making his first public appearance since quadruple by-pass heart surgery seven weeks ago, and his reception was like that for an injured star player taking the field to rescue the game in its final minutes.
"If this isn't good for the heart, I don't know what is," he said, smiling energetically.
"Senator Kerry asked me to do it, and I want to do it," Clinton had explained before the event, noting that the race was so close and the differences between the two candidates profound.
His strategic deployment in Philadelphia, a must-win state for the Democrats, was aimed at reigniting the enthusiasm, especially among black voters that he inspired as president, and to get Democrats to turn out in sufficient numbers on polling day to defeat the Bush-Cheney campaign.
People started lining up for places in the streets a full five hours in advance, and by the time Mr Clinton and John Kerry appeared together at 1 p.m. they faced a vast throng filling Benjamin Franklin Parkway from City Hall to the Art Museum.
The crowd gave the former president a tumultuous five-minute ovation when he came to the microphone after he and Mr Kerry were showered with a blizzard of confetti.
The former president was sidelined by Al Gore during the 2000 campaign because of the fresh memories of the Monica Lewinsky affair, a decision many Democrats believe lost the vice president vital support.
With the passage of time and the publication of his memoirs Mr Clinton has rehabilitated his image as that of a president who brought prosperity and jobs to America.
Today he has a 48 per cent positive rating, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, higher than that for Mr Kerry or Mr Bush.
His presence on the campaign is also a reminder to voters all across the US - the event got blanket coverage on cable news networks - that the period over which the last Democratic president presided was one of unprecedented prosperity for America.
Speaking without a script, Mr Clinton peppered his speech with statistics. He reminded them that under George Bush America had lost jobs for the first time in 70 years.
Pennsylvania had lost 70,000 jobs, compared to the 219,000 gained "when that last fella' was in office".
Since President George Bush took office, 330,000 Pensylvanians had lost their health care and 249,000 had been added to the poverty rolls.
The Bush campaign, Clinton said, had been trying to scare the undecided voters about John Kerry and to scare the decided voters away from the polls, which "worked so well in Florida they were now trying it elsewhere".
He concluded: "If one crowd's trying to scare you and the other is trying to get you to think, you'd better go for the one trying to make you think and hope."
Mr Clinton (58) is said by friends to be recovering well from his operation but the process has been slower than anticipated. He has clearly lost a lot of weight.
Ms Hillary Rodham Clinton said in New York that he "has taken seriously all the advice the doctors had given him".
Whatever the state of his health, Mr Clinton clearly has the energy to continue campaigning and he made another appearance for Mr Kerry in Florida last night. Mr Kerry, speaking before perhaps the biggest crowd of his campaign, used the Philadelphia rally to make a new attack on President Bush as a "failed commander-in-chief".
He cited a report in the New York Times that 380 tons of powerful explosives - powerful enough to demolish buildings and detonate nuclear weapons - had disappeared in Iraq.
"George Bush talks tough, he brags about making America safer," he said, but he failed to guard a stockpile of explosives that "would give terrorists the greatest explosive bonanza in history".
Mr Kerry said he had asked Mr Clinton on the way to the rally what the former president had in common with George Bush, and that Clinton had replied after a moment's thought, "In eight days and 12 hours we will both be former presidents".
Referring to a TV interview on Sunday when Mr Bush said that the US was safer from terrorism than before the September 11th 2001 attacks but "whether or not we can ever be fully safe is up in the air", Mr Kerry said that he would make America safe and "it's not going to be up in the air whether we make America safer".
The White House played down the Clinton appearance, saying that it was a sign of weakness that the candidate needed "to roll him off the surgery table and on to the campaign trail". Meanwhile the Bush campaign is also seeking to benefit from celebrity appearances. The Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, will address a Republican rally in Ohio this week for President Bush.