America:Bill Clinton told his audience at Walterboro Elementary School in South Carolina that he was there to answer questions and not to make a speech but he first wanted to make a couple of quick points. More than half an hour later, after a detailed policy tour around healthcare reform, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, energy independence and emerging global challenges, the former president was still talking - mostly about himself.
It was the same thing when the questions started, almost every one offering Clinton an opportunity to discuss the work he does all over the world with his foundation or to defend his record as president.
"The last three years when I was president, we ran a surplus that was the first three-year period of surplus in 70 years," he told a man who asked about how Hillary Clinton would pay for her campaign promises.
Hillary Clinton has been absent from South Carolina for much of this week but as the state prepares to vote in a Democratic primary today, her "super-surrogate" has been making headlines, few of them positive. Critics complain that the former president is demeaning himself by getting down and dirty in the campaign, acting as his wife's attack dog against Barack Obama.
Obama has become so frustrated by the Clintons' double act that he said this week that he's sometimes not sure which of them he's running against. Jim Clyburn, South Carolina's senior congressman, asked the former president to "chill a little", and leading figures in the Democratic party, including Senator Edward Kennedy, have warned him about the potential long-term damage of his attacks on Obama.
In fact, Clinton has been more relaxed in South Carolina than he was earlier in the campaign, when he came across as Little Rock's answer to Lear, railing against political hurricanes on the blasted heaths of New Hampshire and Nevada.
The weekend before New Hampshire's primary, he erupted with an attack on the media's coverage of Obama's record of opposition to the Iraq war, describing as a "fairy tale" the idea that there was much difference between Obama - who opposed the war from the start - and Hillary Clinton, who voted to authorise it.
In Nevada the former president created a scene at a casino, claiming that he had witnessed Obama supporters intimidating workers who were planning to vote for Clinton.
Both outbursts provoked almost universal condemnation but they were also followed by unexpected victories for Clinton and her campaign is convinced that the former president is doing her more good than harm. For a start, he has provoked Obama into counter-attacking, a move that threatens to tarnish the Illinois senator's image as a new kind of politician who operates above the fray.
Bill Clinton is the only surrogate who attracts as much press attention as any candidate, and his presence in South Carolina all week has allowed his wife to campaign in California and raise money in New York ahead of Super Tuesday on February 5th.
Hillary Clinton's decision to stay away for much of the week has helped to broadcast the impression that she has all but given up on winning South Carolina, where African-Americans make up more than half of the Democratic electorate.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Although Obama enjoys a clear poll lead, with black voters breaking more than two to one in his favour, he doesn't have the support of South Carolina's black political establishment.
Almost all the leading black politicians and many of the most powerful churches are supporting Clinton, who has hired state senator Darrell Jackson, the most formidable African-American political organiser in South Carolina.
The Obama campaign has built up a huge organisation in the state from scratch, using the internet and text messaging to reach supporters and opening 27 offices across the state. Clinton is taking a more traditional approach, targeting barber shops and beauty parlours and paying "walking-around money" to local figures of influence to rent buses and hire drivers to get out the vote.
Bill Clinton, who remains popular among African-Americans, is a key element in his wife's strategy for reaching black voters but his high profile risks reminding some voters of episodes in his presidency they would prefer to forget.
"What do you do when you get married?" a five year-old girl asked the former president this week, evoking waves of laughter from the crowd.
"See all the press people back there? They put me through the wringer this morning, and everything I said is about to pale in comparison to what I'm now going to say," he replied before giving an innocuous answer about his wife being his best friend.
At a Republican debate in Florida on Thursday night, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney articulated the fears of many Democrats when he said he was looking forward to running against Hillary Clinton in November.
"I frankly can't wait because the idea of Bill Clinton back in the White House with nothing to do is something I can't imagine," he said.
