The Hillary and Bill Show

Wednesday, Jul. 04, 2007 By MARK HALPERIN

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A Clinton supporter promotes the former First Lady in Des Moines.

Christopher Morris / VII for TIME

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The sequence is firmly fixed for most great American duos. It is never Costello and Abbott, or Cher and Sonny, or Clyde and Bonnie. And up to this point in history, it has always been Bill and Hillary. As the former First Couple campaigned together for the first time in Iowa over the Fourth of July holiday week, their agenda was topped by one goal: the political sleight of hand necessary to change their public partnership from Bill and Hillary Clinton to Hillary and Bill Clinton.

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That's how they were brought onto the stage at rallies. That was the order on the campaign flyers. For the next six months leading up to the Democratic Party's selection of its 2008 nominee, the Clintons hope to alter the family pecking order in the public mind. Their success may determine her ability to capture the White House.

Senator Clinton will spend most of the next six months campaigning alone, trying to establish an independent political identity. But when she and her husband do hit the road together, aides say, he is committed to using his unparalleled political showmanship solely to help her cause.

All year, Bill Clinton has served as chief fund raiser and private political cheerleader for his wife. But his spousal contributions in Iowa have been especially distinctive. He has helped draw bigger crowds so that the vital precaucus task of amassing names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses (required of all those who attend) produced a bumper crop. At public events and private meetings, Bill Clinton played biographer in chief, talking not about himself or his presidency (well, he might have slipped in a few stories and favorite statistics) but about his wife's career. And at joint meetings with local Democratic activists, aides say, Hillary Clinton took the lead, answering most of the questions.

But Bill Clinton is teaching his wife a thing or two about how to loosen up on the campaign trail. Too often for her own good, Hillary Clinton seems either tentative or strident. In Iowa, Bill Clinton is encouraging her to follow his lead as a happy warrior.

On an elevated stage at the Iowa State Fairgrounds on July 2, the Clintons entered side by side, holding hands, to the swells of her newly selected campaign theme song, Celine Dion's You and I. He stood behind her as they were introduced, occasionally putting his hands on her shoulders or whispering a private thought that invariably made her smile and then laugh.

Iowa is in some ways the most important state for Hillary Clinton's nomination campaign and the one in which she is weakest. (She trails John Edwards in most Iowa polls.) It is for that reason a good place to test her new campaign slogan—"Ready for change! Ready to lead!"—which highlights both her greatest strength as a contender for the job and the most frequent knock on her campaign.