Bill Clinton charmed crowds in southern Africa this week, mingling with barefooted children and joking with peasants in Malawi - showing the diplomatic skills he could put to use if his wife becomes America's first woman president.
Hillary Clinton has said he would make her husband a roaming ambassador, using his talent to repair America's tattered image abroad. Guests at a function Bill Clinon attended on Thursday in Johannesburg for former South African President Nelson Mandela's birthday wanted to know if the American was ready for role reversal.
"You bet!" Bill Clinton said sitting next to a chuckling Mandela.The former US president said he hoped he would not have to give up his Clinton Foundation work on AIDS, malaria and climate change if his wife were to win the White House. His current trip includes visits to a soccer youth outreach programme in Zambia and a remote village in Malawi.
He demonstrated his popular touch yesterday after listening to a Malawian farmer discussing problems facing subsistence peasants in a country regularly battered by drought. "Where I come from I grew up on a farm," he said, "and when a farmer speaks as well as you have done, he quits and joins politics."
Sunday, 22 July 2007
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