Former President Bill Clinton Address the Convention; Bill Clinton Highlights Past Work and Leadership of Hillary Clinton; Powerful Speech by Bill Clinton Calls Hillary a "Change-Maker".
MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, FORMER U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: She knows that safeguarding freedom and security is not like hosting a TV reality show.</s>WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Next the main speech of the night, former President of the United States, Bill Clinton. He'll be introduced with a media right -- with a new -- with a video right now.</s>BILL CLINTON, FORMER U.S PRESIDENT: When I was a little boy, my favorite thing to do would be to go to my grandfather's country store and just meet people. They told me that everybody's got a story. I began to make a connection that there was something you could do if you got elected to help people live better lives.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dear President Bill Clinton.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dear Mr. Bill Clinton.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Dear President Clinton.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you so much for this opportunity to write you.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am writing this letter on behalf of my family and myself.</s>CLINTON: I would read these letters every week. If they wrote us, we'd try to help them.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was a 19-year-old single mom with an eighth grade education. I lived in garage collected welfare. Anguish over the real possibility of my child growing up and losing his life in the streets. Then you came into view. You saw hearts and minds, not colors. You believed that people were defined by their best qualities, not their shortcomings. You showed me that my downtimes, my mistakes and my fears weren't fix as mistakes. They were experiences to learn from and leave behind. Your message permeated the country. Thank you for believing in me. There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: With Bill Clinton the work begins and ends with people. Under his administration 23 million jobs were created and our country had a budget surplus. He signed the Family and Medical Leave Act and gave a historic tax relief for working poor families, the middle class parents sending their children to college. He protected 58.5 million acres of heritage forests and saved Medicare, Medicaid and education spending from republican cuts. His actions have changed millions of lives for the better.</s>CLINTON: We moved a hundred times as many people out of poverty as moved out when President Reagan was in office with 40 percent more jobs, that meant we were empowering more people to take control of their own lives.</s>JOHN BOYER, OHIO RESIDENT: My name is John Boyer. I live in Ashland, Ohio. This farm has been in our possession for about 108 years now. Joseph Robert Nutty (Ph), Ohio. My father work for Chrysler and then I started in 1996. Both sides of my family, you know, was always union so we believe in us and in the working family.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Things were good through the Clinton era. We, you know, we put away -- retired a lot of debt. I think that's important.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ninety three and ninety four was a big boom. Mr. Clinton was captivating. Like when he said stuff, you believed it, you know, because you lived it.</s>JORGE ANGELES, IMMIGRANT: My name is Jorge Angeles. I came to this country in '88. It was virtually impossible to get a house. And then under Bill Clinton, I bought a house. We've been in this house for 23 years now. Politicians tell you that they care for you, but Bill Clinton showed you how he cared for you.</s>CLINTON: I remember I was in this rural county, this guy was standing there talking to me one day and he said, you know, we don't want a handout but we do want a hand up. Stayed with me my whole life. We need to share the future and we need to empower people to make the most of their own lives.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: From Bosnia and Kosovo to Vietnam and Colombia, to Northern Ireland, he worked tirelessly to nurture peace and improve lives, efforts that continued through his foundation across the world. Places like the Central Highlands in Africa where he was struck by the simple but powerful way people greeted each other every day.</s>CLINTON: One will say "Good morning, hello, how are you." And the answer is not, "I'm fine. How are you?" The answer translated into English is, "I see you." That's inherently empowering. You have to be able to look at somebody and actually see them and at least imagine what their lives were like. Ask when a lifetime trying to do that.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In 1999, I graduated in the top 3 percent of my law school class. And in 2013, my son graduated from</s>UCLA. CLINTON: If you get people out of poverty then their children will likely be out of poverty.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I feel like I'm a Clinton baby. The reason why, you know, I aspired to get my law degree and get my business degree. He instills that belief for my mom. In turn, she passed that down to me.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Dear Cynthia, thank you for sharing your amazing story with me and for what you said about the impact of my presidency on your life. And your son's. Out of your troubled past came a mother, lawyer and citizen who embodies the best in America. Help us make more of you. Sincerely, Bill Clinton.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bill Clinton had a good administration. I just like the philosophy of the democrats. They tend to care for each other.</s>CLINTON: You get up in the morning and you're really interested in getting people better life stories. There's always something to do.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Clinton, I want to thank you. You open my eyes when I was 18. I'm living the greatest dream I could ever imagine.</s>CLINTON: I still write my own life story. That's what I tried to make people believe they can do.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton.</s>CLINTON: Thank you. Thank you.</s>BLITZER: A very powerful speech by the former President of the United States, I covered him for a long time. The first time I heard him deliver a speech along those lines, clearly embracing the notion of becoming a political spouse. A speech, Jake Tapper, almost exclusively not about himself but about his wife.</s>JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: A truly remarkable speech. And one of the things that you realized from the speech is first of all, he still has it. He still is one of the great speech givers of this time and really one of the great storytellers of his time. He started out with a line that could have been written by Harper Lee in "To Kill a Mocking Bird." In the spring of 1971, I met a girl. Then he goes a lays the case. And the case he was making was not only Hillary Clinton the spouse, Hillary Clinton the person. And clearly, they do feel the need here at the Democratic National Convention to explain to people who the real Hillary Clinton is. But also, Hillary Clinton the change-maker. In this election we have a very stark difference between somebody who is really identified with the status quo, Hillary Clinton, and somebody who I think its agreed, whether you like him or not, to represent change and that's Donald Trump. Now his job here was clearly to say she represents change, talking about all the ways that she changed things in Arkansas and when she worked for the Children's Defense Fund. He said she's never satisfied with the status quo. Talking about the stories told about Hillary Clinton and the stories told about Donald Trump and saying you know who the real one is when it comes to change, she's the real one.</s>DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: And also reminding people that she is feminine, that she is a woman and she said talking about meeting a girl in the spring of 1971, but then making it clear that she was sort of the object of desire.</s>TAPPER: Right.</s>BASH: Which I know that it sounds a little bit, maybe a little bit, you know, quaint or whatever, but it actually is incredibly important politically for people to hear this because she has become, as he was saying, in many ways a caricature. Because people feel that they know her and certainly republicans trying to paint her in a certain way last week, but talking about her as magnetic. And he really did try to feminize her, never mind as, you know, somebody who he wanted to date and went after and chased, tried to get her to marry him in three times but also as he went through the years, a mother, a young working mother. And really trying to bring that part of her out that people don't really get to see.</s>BLITZER: And he took on the republicans at the end of his speech, he really went after them. He said there is one image of Hillary Clinton that you heard of that republican convention, the critics and there's another version of her you heard from me tonight, one is real, the other is made up. And he told the people you want to vote for the real Hillary Clinton, the one I told you about, the one who gets very, very -- has effectively done what she's trying to do all of these years.</s>TAPPER: He described -- you said caricature, what he said was cartoon.</s>BASH: Yes.</s>TAPPER: He said when you can't run against somebody who are -- because they are such a compelling change maker, you have to create a cartoon, it's much easier to run against that. The case that he's trying to make here is, yes, you've been hearing about Hillary Clinton for decades but what you've been hearing about is not the real Hillary Clinton, it is a cartoon, don't believe it, believe the real person beloved by her friends dating all the way to Arkansas, or even earlier than that to her childhood..</s>BASH: I also wrote down the number of states that he listed off.</s>TAPPER: That was great. That was classic.</s>BASH: As you said --as you said, OK, this is another example of how Bill Clinton still has it. The way he talked to, you know, from Illinois, then talked about Alaska, about Texas, about South Carolina, and Massachusetts, Arkansas, as a way to sort of clearly interact with the crowd, knowing that the delegations were going to go crazy when he talked about that, but also in trying to make the point that she at a very young age traveled to try to help people. I thought that was a very nice statement.</s>TAPPER: And also with Bill Clinton, it's not enough just to say he was working on the subcommittee.</s>BASH: Right.</s>TAPPER: It has to be the subcommittee headed by Walter Mondale so that the people from Minnesota...</s>BASH: Exactly, exactly.</s>TAPPER: One other thing on the Massachusetts thing, on the visit to Massachusetts when she was building getting information to help children with the Children's Defense Fund and finding that young girl not in school because she was in a wheelchair on her porch. He said in this and he didn't have to say anything more because it's been such a highlight of the Clinton campaign and their case against Donald Trump. He didn't make -- she doesn't believe in making fun of the disabled.</s>BASH: Right.</s>TAPPER: She believes in empowering them. Clear contrast with when Donald Trump made fun of that disabled reporter.</s>BLITZER: You know, it's also very important -- it's also very important that were a couple representatives about mentioning Donald Trump by name in which he went after Donald Trump, said Hillary never makes fun of people with disabilities, she empowers people with disabilities. And also, and also this whole notion that the military is a disaster, she doesn't believe that, he doesn't believe that either. Let me tell you what's going to be coming up next, Alicia Keys is going to be performing. This is going to be the historic nature of what is happening right now. This is the first time a major political party in the United States has nominated a woman to be the nominee. Meryl Streep is going to be introducing this moment, a very powerful moment that's coming up.</s>TAPPER: And look at that patriotic outfit that Meryl Streep is wearing.</s>MERYL STREEP, ACTRESS: We got some sight left in us, don't we?