Bill Clinton portrays Hillary as change-maker

Former President Bill Clinton portrayed his wife Hillary early Wednesday morning as a dynamic force for change and a longtime fighter for social justice as he made a case for her historic 2016 bid for the White House.

The ex-president told the Democratic Party convention in Philadelphia that Hillary Clinton had a built-in sense of responsibility.

“Hillary is uniquely qualified to seize the opportunities and reduce the risks we face, and she is still the best darn change-maker I have ever known,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Hillary Clinton secured the Democratic Party’s nomination for the Nov. 8 election, coming back from a stinging 2008 defeat in her first White House run and surviving a bitter primary fight to become the first woman to head the ticket of a major party in U.S. history.

Bill Clinton told the convention in a keynote speech that Hillary had been an activist for social justice since the couple’s early days as law students together. He told how she gave legal aid services to poor people and went undercover to expose a segregationist school in Alabama in the 1970s.

After a tough battle with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders during the state-by-state nominating contests, Clinton is now the party’s standard-bearer against Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Bill Clinton said Republicans led by Trump had made Hillary out to be “a cartoon” but the real thing was nothing like the their portrayal of her.

“How do you square it? You can’t. One is real and the other is made up. You just have to decided which is which. The real one had done more positive changemaking before she was 30 than many public officials do in a lifetime.”

President from 1993 to 2001, Bill Clinton, 69, left office with high approval ratings and is known as one of the most powerful political orators in the country.

His speech offered an unusual twist to the warm spousal endorsement of a presidential candidate traditionally given in party conventions by a wife, not a man – let alone a former president of the United States.

Clinton described how he proposed to his wife three times before she accepted.

“I married my best friend. I was still in awe after more than four years of being around her and how smart and strong and loving and caring she was,” Clinton said.

He praised her as a mother and recounted her clearheadedness after he lost his second term as governor of Arkansas.

“I became overnight I think the youngest former governor in the history of the country. Hillary was great. Immediately she said…here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to get a house. You’re going to get a job we’re going to enjoy being Chelsea’s parents. And if you really want to run again, you’ve got to go out and talk to people. Figure out why you lost. Tell people you’ve got the message and show them you still got good ideas.”

“I followed her advice — within two days we had a house. I soon had a job. We had two fabulous years with Chelsea. And in 1982 I became the first governor in the history of our state to be elected, defeated and elected again. My experience is it’s a good thing to follow her advice.”

Hillary Clinton‘s nomination was a milestone in America’s 240-year-old history. U.S. women got the right to vote in 1920 after ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.

Supporters of Hillary Clinton say her Washington credentials show she has the experience needed for the White House during troubled times as the United States tries to speed up its economic recovery and faces security challenges abroad.

Detractors view her as too cozy with the establishment and say she carries political baggage dating back to the start of Bill Clinton‘s first White House term in the 1990s.