Clinton promotes Kerry -- and himself -- on campaign trail

PHILADELPHIA -- It was vintage Bill Clinton, a lip-biting, thumb-wagging, center-of-attention performance.

Seven weeks after quadruple bypass heart surgery, looking pale and unusually thin, the former president came back to give John Kerry a sendoff for the final week of the campaign -- promoting his own presidency as well -- and bluntly framed the campaign between Kerry and President Bush.

"You've got a clear choice between two strong men with great convictions and philosophies, different policies with very different consequences for this city, this state, our nation and the world," Clinton told thousands of Democrats crammed shoulder-to-shoulder inside three city blocks.

Nobody seemed to notice that he had just called Bush strong, with equal billing to Kerry. Then again, few in the crowd seemed to be there to hear Kerry who, according to polls, is supported by a political base united in its disdain for Bush more than its enthusiasm for the Democratic nominee.

Kerry hopes that Clinton can help turn out Democratic voters, especially blacks like Jackson who are lukewarm about their nominee.

Clinton plans to campaign without Kerry this weekend in the tossup states of Nevada and New Mexico as well as his home state of Arkansas, a GOP-leaning state where polls suggest that Bush's lead has shrunk.

"From time to time, I have been called the Comeback Kid. In eight days, John Kerry's going to make America the comeback country," Clinton said in his speech.

In making his case for Kerry, Clinton used a rhetorical tool that dates to his days as Arkansas' governor: statistics. Nobody uses numbers like Clinton. There are 249,000 new cases of poverty in Pennsylvania. Some 333,000 people who lost health insurance. Unemployment is up 26 percent. About 140,000 unemployed workers were kicked off job training and 88,000 cops have been pulled off the streets.

He added it all up into an indictment of Bush -- and his happy memories of his own days in power. The Comeback Kid had a little more to say about himself.

"In Pennsylvania alone, you've lost 70,000 jobs as compared with the 219,000 you gained by this time when that last fellow was president -- me," he said.