President Clinton Touts Wife as 'Change Agent'

AMES, Iowa — With the top Democrats locked in a virtual dead heat in this first voting state, Senator Clinton's surrogate-in-chief is boosting her as a "change agent," rebutting the charge by her rivals that she is tied to a broken political system that has failed to bring meaningful reform.

"She's spent a lifetime as a change agent," President Clinton said of his wife to an auditorium of 500 potential voters on the campus of Iowa State University. He cited more than three decades of Mrs. Clinton's work advocating for children, pushing for expanded health care, and helping Americans in need.

The theme of change is becoming a mantra for the former president as he stumps for Mrs. Clinton, just as it has for months stood at the center of the campaigns of Senator Obama of Illinois and John Edwards, her chief opponents for the Democratic nomination.

Mr. Clinton tried to swat away the notion that Mrs. Clinton's experience is limited to the seven years she has served in the Senate, characterizing her decades as an attorney and as first lady of Arkansas and then of America as a career devoted to reform in whatever job she held.

"She was always making changes — not necessarily in office," Mr. Clinton said at one point during a 40-minute speech. He returned to the same message several times. "No public office, but always a change agent," he said.

Defining Mrs. Clinton as a change agent is a new effort to blunt the contrasts sought by Messrs. Obama and Edwards, who have pushed for a dramatic shift away from the style of politics that the Clintons represented in the 1990s. Mr. Obama repeatedly calls for "a new kind of politics," while Mr. Edwards has criticized Mrs. Clinton for defending a "corrupt" system ruled by special interests.

A spokesman for the Republican National Committee responded to Mr. Clinton's comments by saying the type of change another President Clinton would bring would be higher taxes, more government, and a retreat in the war on terror. "The American people don't want the kind of change Senator Clinton would bring about," the spokesman, Danny Diaz, said.

Mr. Clinton has come to Iowa for a two-day swing on Mrs. Clinton's behalf amid an intense fight for the first prize in the nomination battle. The race here appears to be nearing a fever pitch, as the candidates traverse the snow-covered state to get their messages out before the holidays. Television ads are saturating local stations, with spots for at least five different candidates airing in a single hour-long period this morning.

While the New York senator once appeared invincible during the fall, she now trails Mr. Obama in several Iowa polls three weeks before the caucuses. Mr. Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, is not far behind.

Polls of the Democratic race in other early states and nationwide have also tightened, and Bloomberg News reported yesterday that Mrs. Clinton's struggles have led to discord within her campaign and speculation that a staff shake-up may be in the offing.

Though a renowned campaigner, Mr. Clinton has caused headaches of his own for Mrs. Clinton. In his last appearance in Iowa, he said he "opposed Iraq from the beginning," a statement at odds with the much more nuanced view of the war he espoused at the time of the American invasion. Mr. Clinton fumed at press reports of the appearance, but he notably did not repeat the assertion in his afternoon appearances in Iowa yesterday.

As he has done before, Mr. Clinton avoided criticism of Mrs. Clinton's rivals and was effusive in his praise of the Democratic field. He did, however, offer a glancing mention of a potential opponent of his wife: Mayor Bloomberg.

Discussing the need to combat climate change and its possible economic benefits, Mr. Clinton cited his work with the mayor to retrofit more than 2,600 city public housing facilities for energy efficiency and to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. "Can you imagine how many jobs we're going to create in New York?" the former president said. He did not mention Mr. Bloomberg's name, much less the possibility that he may challenge Mrs. Clinton for the presidency next year.

Mr. Clinton's recent missteps have done nothing to diminish his appeal for Iowa crowds. He was greeted with an enthusiastic ovation from an older audience in Ames and then by a much louder roar from a packed gymnasium of students later in the day at Grinnell College.

Several audience members in Ames said they were glad the former president avoided the negative attacks on opponents that have increasingly marked the campaign in Iowa, Mrs. Clinton included. "We're not backbiters," a central Iowa resident, Connie Neese, 71, said. She said she was a loyal Clinton supporter but worried that she had begun to go negative on her rivals. "I think you can rise above it."

An Ames resident who supports Mrs. Clinton, Trish Sheil, called the attacks "disgusting" but said the senator was showing backbone by responding in kind to her rivals. "We need some men with guts like her," she said.