Bill Clinton avoids spotlight in Hillary's campaign

By Matthew Bigg

HOPE MILLS, North Carolina (Reuters) - There was no finger-wagging, no red-faced explosion of anger at the media and no wistful recollection of the good old days of the Clinton presidency in the 1990s.

Bill Clinton, whose outbursts early in the year threatened to disrupt his wife Hillary's presidential campaign, appears to have himself firmly under control and on a tour of North Carolina this week he kept the spotlight firmly on her.

During a two-day swing through small towns in the state, Clinton relentlessly advocated for the New York senator and avoided controversy or even mentioning the name of her opponent for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Barack Obama.

"Hillary is in this race today with a real chance of winning because of people like you," he said in Hope Mills.

Hillary Clinton trails Obama before next week' vote in North Carolina in the state-by-state nomination contest to face Republican John McCain in November's election. The candidates are roughly even in the Indiana vote to be held the same day.

Bill Clinton, now 61, has been described as one of the most gifted and effective politicians in recent U.S. history, scoring an unlikely presidential win in 1992 and easily securing re-election in 1996.

His ability to charm voters -- rich and poor, white and black, young and old -- was seen as a likely plus for his wife when she decided to run, even if some had misgivings about his returning to the White House as "First Husband".

ERUPTIONS OF ANGER

But early this year the man who survived impeachment over an affair with an intern and who was known for occasional volcanic bouts of anger during his eight-year term, ran into a series of controversies on the campaign trail.

He dismissed Obama's contention of consistently opposing the Iraq war as a "fairy tale." He upbraided a CNN reporter, waving his finger in her face, after she asked him to comment on a suggestion that Clinton campaign tactics had raised the issue of race.

Last month he appeared to bungle again, defending his wife over her claims -- that had been shown to be untrue -- that she landed under sniper fire on a trip to Bosnia as First Lady in 1996. That intervention reignited a controversy that had begun to subside.

His high profile and frequent references to his own presidency raised questions for some voters about who would actually be in charge in a new Clinton administration.

But his speeches to North Carolina audiences of a few hundred on Wednesday were deliberately low-key and some events were like a throw-back to campaigns from an earlier era.

In Sanford, he climbed onto the back of a red, flat-bed truck in a field to speak to voters. In Lillington, he stood on the front porch of a white-paneled town hall with a microphone in hand.

STICKS TO ISSUES