Convention comeuppance for Bill

Denver: Bill Clinton was supposed to beam at the side of his wife at the Democratic convention as she was crowned their party's presidential nominee. Instead, he clenched back tears as his wife formally surrendered the nomination to Barack Obama and threw her full support behind her former opponent.

At one point, watching her from inside the convention hall, he leaned back in his seat to bask in applause when she said Democrats know how to lead on the economy and other challenges. "President Clinton and the Democrats did it before, and President Obama and the Democrats will do it again," she said.

The 42nd president's campaign performance this year was erratic: He helped drive voters his wife's way, but his occasional outbursts at critics and reporters tarnished his image as a statesman.

He has complicated the task of reconciliation with comments early on that were critical of Obama, and with tepid endorsements since.

Second to second fiddle

Now he is playing second fiddle to his wife, who is second fiddle to her one-time opponent - in part because of her husband's undisciplined campaigning through the primary battle. At the same time, he is trying not to hog Obama's spotlight.

On Tuesday, his first full day here, Clinton did what comes hardest: He kept a low profile and avoided publicly wading into political waters still roiled by tensions between the Obama and Clinton camps.

"Must be killing him," Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen said.

Speaking before a gathering on international affairs, Clinton gave a subdued address on democracy and global warming, referring to the convention and the campaign only in broad strokes. After about ten minutes of remarks, he walked off stage and left the building to work on his wife's Tuesday night convention address and his own speech yesterday.

Clinton, known for his surgical grasp of political minutiae, offered no campaign post-mortem and dispensed no advice to Obama.

Instead, he said simply: "This was an endlessly fascinating process already, and it's still got some twists and turns between now and November." Clinton said the Democratic campaign will go down in history not only for the closeness of the race, but for the explosion of small campaign donations and proliferation of sources of political information.

His speech skirted the political drama simmering 800 metres away. Who would the Clinton delegates vote for in a roll call? Would the Clinton loyalists channel their energy to Obama?