Former President Bill Clinton said Sen. Hillary Clinton has the answers to the challenges America faces during a campaign stop at Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College Monday.

Saying his wife would be a magnificent president, Clinton said she has improved the lives of people across the globe.

"She has always been able to make changes in people's lives. If she wins this, you'll be glad to be a part of it," Clinton said.

OCtech's Roquemore Auditorium was only slightly over half-filled for the former president. Before Clinton approached the stage, OCtech President Dr. Anne Crook said the crowd may have not been big in number but it was big in spirit.

Clinton state campaign spokesman Zac Wright said the smaller crowd of about 150 allowed for a more intimate gathering.

Clinton listed three challenges he believes the next president must confront: class inequalities, changing the international perception that the country acts unilaterally and global warming. He said Hillary Clinton is best equipped among presidential contenders to answer those challenges.

Clinton particularly stressed the importance of global warming during his almost hour-long speech. A commitment to becoming energy efficient and making the switch from oil to biodiesel and ethanol fuels is crucial to America's future both economically and environmentally, he said.

For example, Clinton said it is too expensive to run ethanol through a pipeline to areas more than 100 miles away. He said this would create the opportunity for more jobs because people will have to be employed to transport ethanol.

More jobs would have to be created to make office buildings and residences more energy-efficient to combat climate change under a Hillary Clinton administration, he said.

Clinton touched on his wife's foreign policy experience, highlighting that she traveled to 83 countries while she was First Lady. He said that while she was First Lady, Hillary Clinton had an independent role in the peace process in Northern Ireland and also stood by women in the African nation of Senegal to help end the practice of female genital mutilation there.

"The process has turned and that was in part due to Hillary Clinton," the former president said.

Clinton spoke highly of the depth of the Democratic presidential field and even said he likes several of the Republican candidates, but did not mention any by name. He said that even if he was not married to Sen. Clinton, he would still support her candidacy.

"I honestly believe that she is best suited for the moment and is the best qualified," Clinton said. He said it has been fun campaigning for his wife, which he has also done in Iowa and other early voting states.

The Orangeburg stop was the third in South Carolina for Clinton Monday. He also stumped in Sumter earlier in the day and held a breakfast with community leaders in Columbia.

During his speech at OCtech, Clinton detailed several of Sen. Clinton's efforts in education, such as creating a plan to teach low-income parents how to better prepare their children for school while she was first lady of Arkansas. Clinton said that his wife modeled the plan after one she discovered in Israel.

She was also the head of a committee that created recommendations to improve Arkansas' education system during his time as governor, he said. Clinton said that after the committee's recommendations were implemented, Arkansas and South Carolina were ranked as having the most improved education systems in the nation in the 1980s.

A Hillary Clinton administration would look at successful school districts in the nation and implant their practices at underperforming schools, he said.

He also discussed Sen. Clinton's plan to bring affordable health care to all Americans. Under her proposal, people can either keep their current coverage or choose from a number of plans available to members of Congress, and the plan would also extend tax cuts to working families to pay for their premiums, he said.

Following his speech, Clinton took a few questions from the audience.

One woman asked what Sen. Clinton would do in her first days as president. Clinton said his wife would deploy him and former President George H.W. Bush to nations to say America is open for business and cooperation. He also said that she would remove as many troops from Iraq as possible. Legislatively, she would present her health care and energy proposals to Congress, Clinton said.

"She would change America's image overnight," he said of his wife's presidency.

T&D Staff Writer Lee Tant can be reached by e-mail at ltant@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-534-1060. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.

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