Bill Clinton, From Star to Scandal to Statesman, Seeks to Lift Up Harris

No one will take the stage at the Democratic National Convention this week with more experience at the task of the Big Speech than former President Bill Clinton.

When he gets up on Wednesday night at Chicago’s United Center, it will be the 12th time he has addressed the party’s quadrennial conclave, a record of rhetoric that has gotten him dubbed the “secretary of explaining stuff.”

But the progression of those dozen speeches reflects the larger story of Mr. Clinton’s political life, a tale of boom and bust and boom again that has made him one of the most enduring figures of American life in the modern era, if not always its most universally accepted. He has gone from young rising star to tiresome bloviator to dynamic presidential nominee to popular incumbent to scandal-tarred lame duck to candidate husband to wise elder statesman, with quite a few ups and downs in between.

So perhaps it is not surprising that he takes the whole convention exercise pretty seriously. In fact, according to a person familiar with the process, Mr. Clinton scrapped his draft speech for this week’s convention on Monday night after watching the proceedings of the first day and started over again.

The person, who was granted anonymity to discuss behind-the-scenes preparations, said Mr. Clinton concluded that, in the spirit of Mario Cuomo, the New York governor who gave the keynote address at the 1984 convention, he needed more poetry, not prose. The former president was also struck by the palpable energy of the convention hall and felt the need to adjust to take it into account.

Mr. Clinton, who turned 78 on Monday, is the same age as former President Donald J. Trump and three years younger than President Biden, and to some extent a product of