Liveblog: Bill Clinton in Solon

President Bill Clinton is making a sweep across the state on behalf of his wife, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Wednesday night he appeared at Solon High School, a mid-sized eastern Iowa town located between the powerhouses of Iowa City and Cedar Rapids.

The liveblog from the event is located below the fold…

8:10 p.m. — The high school commons area in Solon is completely packed and there is absolutely no way I’m going to be able to see if I remain seated and liveblogging the entire time. The back few rows — as well as the folks in the upper balcony area, who are busying themselves with chanting “We want Clinton!” — are all standing. There are no more chairs. Still, the music plays and there’s no staff activity that I can see that would indicate we are about to get underway.

8:15 p.m. — Former Gov. Tom Vilsack takes the stage with Clinton. Vilsack is at the lectern and asks those in the audience to please have a seat. The audience, which has been on its feet for quite some time, found this funny. We’ll see if their sense of humor holds out over the next hour.

Vilsack says this is the “most important civic responsibility we have as citizens.” He goes on with the current Clinton talking points: “Who is prepared to be the best president?” He notes the newspaper endorsements, legislative endorsements and various others — the crowd responds, although I think I hear some booing from stage left. That’s not typical “Iowa nice” behavior.

8:20 p.m. — Vilsack is continuing to speak, but sounds like he’s coming to the crux of his introduction of the former president. “He’s a man who knows what the job entails,” Vilsack said.

Yes, that’s it from Vilsack. He promised to keep it short and he did. Clinton begins by thanking both Tom and Christie Vilsack for being good supporters and “good friends.”

“They have told us, always and forever, to trust the people of Iowa,” he said.

“Glad to be here in your community,” he said. “Someone told me the population was just under 1,500. I believe we got everyone here.” Yes, looking around, I think just about the entire town turned out.

“Iowa has a special responsibility… those of you who can caucus, should do so.” He mentions the troops serving in the Middle East and those who work night shift who cannot caucus. He said a woman broke down crying because she couldn’t caucus for Hillary because she works night shift and would lose her job if she missed work. “You have to caucus for her,” he said.

He said this is a special election for him because he doesn’t have to be “against anybody.” He asks the audience how many of them have walked into the voting booth and voted for “C” because they just couldn’t stand it if “A” or “B” were elected. “You know you have,” he said.

Clinton then moves into providing accolades to the other Democratic candidates. “I’m happy to have a field of people who are presenting themselves for your consideration,” he said.

“I know what it is like to be president and the decisions that come to you,” he said.

A big part of being successful is to keep your promises and to deal with the unforeseen things that happen during your tenure as president. “It requires strength and concentration and a never-ending groundswell of compassion for people,” he said.

He segways briefly into the energy crisis in order to say that this is a job-winner, not a job crisis, before moving to touch on health care. He said that he believes his wife — even if she weren’t his wife — will make the best president. “Now I want to tell you why,” he said.

First, he says, you have to look for the right vision. Hillary, he says, wants to build the middle class. Second, she wants to restore America’s standing in the world by ending the war in Iraq and preserving a moderate Muslim democracy in Afghanistan. “We need to send a different message to the world,” he said.

“We know there is no problem that the United States can solve alone,” he said.

8:30 p.m. — We will use diplomacy where we can and force only as a last resort, he said. “She wants to reclaim the future for America’s children,” Clinton said and indicates that’s his wife’s third point. He hits on science being tossed out of Washington, D.C. and gives praise to Al Gore for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. He says that it must be a worldwide effort — we cannot leave India and China out. “Move to a post-carbon economy,” he said. Doing so, he says will create an economic boom throughout the nation, in every sector of society.

Fourth, in order to do all of this, he says, we have to reform how Washignton operates. He hits on Blackwater and takes a few swipes at the current administration when he discusses giving friends special jobs that arent’ based on merit.

The audience standing in front of the press barracade has begun to shift back and forth on their feet, alternating which foot takes the most weight. Some are leaning on the fencing, but everyone that I can see remains under control of the man at the lecturn as he talks about the plight of health care in America.

There is very little audience reaction tonight. My guess would be that the audience here understands that the less they interrupt with their applause, the more they will hear from the former president.

8:35 p.m. — Clinton continues to discuss health care, focusing now on America’s senior citizens.

He moves into a discussion on the budget by saying that Clinton is a fiscal conservative. “She believes in balancing the budget,” he said. “Hillary’s father never bought a single car that he couldn’t play cash for… we were taught that [math] matters.”

“Why can’t the current president enforce the trade rules?” he asks and then points out that those who export the most to our nation are also the ones who hold our debts. He says that you can’t walk into the bank, slap the bank president and then expect to get a loan that day. When it comes to mortgaging our debt, Clinton says, “we must stop doing it now.”

8:40 p.m. — When it comes to health care, we have to cover everybody. “America is a great, can-do nation,” he said, “until it comes to health care.” He says that’s “ridiculous, wrong and hurting our economy.”

$700 billion dollars less per year, he says, if you drop any other nation’s health care plan into the United States. “That’s how much we could save,” he said.

We also have to promote wellness, he said. “We have too many kids that are developing diabetes,” he said. “One out of three children born in this decade may develop type 2 diabetes — the kind you are not born with.”

Baby boomers — 43 to 61 — “the good news about American health care — one situation where we still excel — if you get to be 61, you are a part of the oldest senior population on earth.” But when the baby boomers retire, because there are so many, it will pose a heavy burden on our children and grandchildren.

“I’m a great example of the problem with my generation,” he said and the audience responded with laughter.

8:47 p.m. — People in the audience are shifting a bit quicker from one foot to the other while Clinton gives a brief overview of the Clinton health plan. Most here look as if they know the information — eyes are straying to other people, looking around the room.

The attention snaps back when he says electronic medical records would save “$80 billion dollars a year.” He says we all have been to the doctor and have had to sit and answer the same series of questions. There comes a time, he says, when people forget and we have tests ordered or wrong prescriptions given based on mistakes in the medical histories.

Safeway grocery stores, he said, offers to pay all the co-pays and deductibles for employees that don’t smoke. While this seemed to be a not very fiscally sound way to go about business, he said, Safeway actually saved money by doing this. “Hillary wants to do that for you,” he said.

8:50 p.m. — Clinton has moved from health care to No Child Left Behind and is discussing how teachers are now “teaching to the test.” There is every chance that NCLB could actually reduce student achievement here, he said. “It’s nuts,” he adds, “it doesn’t make sense — but there is a germ of good intention here.”

He said Congress wanted to do something for accountability, but didn’t want to undermine local control. “We know that American students do well compared to others internationally at the fourth grade level,” he said. “There’s a gap at the 8th grade and a cavern at the 12th grade, which we close some because we send more kids to college.”

Clinton says his wife will find 20 schools of each grade level who excel and will study them and put what they are doing into a national plan.

“This is not rocket science,” he said about education before moving into green job creation.

8:55 p.m. — “Because the hour is late, I won’t go into all the details,” he said. Many around me in the audience smiled at that. A few people are starting to move through the crowd, away from the stage. Whether they are going to find a chair, a drink or bathroom facilities, I don’t know.

Clinton looks around at Solon High School, a facility that’s known for its green heritage, and said “this building looks pretty good.” He wants to talk about how small changes in construction can make big differences.

He says that you take a flat roof and you put sod up there that will keep heat out in the summer and cold out in the winter. “This isn’t some call center in India,” he said, “those are going to be Iowans up there working.”

“These are good jobs, they can’t be outsourced,” he said. “We have enough to keep us busy for a decade.”

Clinton says that “this whole thing” is being covered like a horse race — this isn’t about them, this is about you. “I believe that when we were going together in law school that she was better at this than anybody I met,” he said. “I still think she is better than anybody I’ve met.”

He said that when they were in law school she took a year off and worked for underpriviledged children. Instead of getting a high-profile law job, she went to work for the children’s defense fund. “She was out knocking on doors in some of the poorest neighborhoods,” he said. It was her work there that became the basis of the IDEA Act, he said — something Sen. Tom Harkin has worked hard for.

She implemented a Legal Aide program after that — then, when he was Governor of Arkansas, she found a program in Isreal that helped parents become their children’s first teachers.

By the time he was president, he says, this program had gone to several states and had a headquarters in New York. Millions of little kids who never knew she had anything to do with it, benefited from this program, he said. The audience showed its appreciation for that.

“She was an agent of positive change in other people’s lives,” he said. He said that when he asked her to take on health care she looked at him and said, “You don’t love me anymore, do ya?”

“As you all know, we tried and failed,” he said before listing how many other American presidents and administrations had tried and failed. Through Hillary, Americans got the State Children’s Health Insurace Program (SCHIP) and other health care initiatives.

He says that Hillary represented us in 83 countries. “I could keep you here until tomorrow morning — but I won’t — telling you about cooperatives that she got money for,” he said, while discussing the things Hillary has worked for and at internationally.

9:05 p.m. — Clinton said that during the campaign, she worked with a Republican to co-sponsor a bill that extends the Family Medical Leave Act to veterans and their families.

“There’s one last thing — if you’re not careful, when you are president, you might think you are somebody and forget the eyes you looked into in Iowa,” he said. “You have to bend over backwards not to forget that you are just a person — think about what it is like to be president — they play music when you walk into a room, you never get stuck in traffic, you live in the best public housing — we’re laughing, but you know what I say is true. You don’t have to worry about that with Hillary.”

This is why her friends from years ago have shown up here to campaign for her — while New York farmers have come to Iowa to campaign for her — this is why friends from Arkansas came her to campaign for her. “She never forgets what the purpose of public office is,” he said.

Clinton says he’s going to end with a story — a friend is coming to New York and wants Clinton to use his influence as a former President to get them on the golf course near his home. They went and played and got caddies. He said the caddy grabbed him and said, “Don’t go. I want to tell you something. I’m not really a caddy” — He said, “I just do this to supplement my family income. In my real life I’m a captain in the New York Fire Department.”

Clinton says the fire fighter told him that before Sept. 11, many of the fire fighters thought they were Republicans. “Your wife was the very first person who knew that many of us would get sick and many of us would die because of what we were doing — doing our duty,” he said. “But the president most of us voted for and the others in the White House said there was no way we could get sick.”

“She never stopped fighting for us,” Clinton said as he continues to relate the fire fighter’s words to him that day in New York. “I don’t know much about politics, but I know that’s the kind of person who should be president — the kind of person who knows what it is like to be me and many other people here in America.”

Clinton says he still has trouble telling the story without getting emotional. “That is the person I’ve known for years,” he said. “She’s got the right vision, the right plan and is a proven agent for change…. she will never forget the stories she’s heard here in Iowa.”

9:20 p.m. — “Happy New Year & God Bless You.” The music fires up and the part of the audience that was sitting is now on its feet. Clinton is shaking a few hands — I’m going to try to get close enough for a photo. Good night everyone — the snow is falling again in eastern Iowa so be safe driving home.