Hillary Clinton Shapes Potential New Role for Bill Clinton

Former President Bill Clinton said Monday night that he's open to 

helping out the potential administration of his wife after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke about what his role could be in a number of recent comments.

"I'll do whatever I'm asked to do, but I like this economic business," he said after a campaign event in the U.S. Virgin Islands when asked by NBC News about whether he is ready to jump back into policy at the White House again.

Hillary Clinton, who's still stuck in the fierce Democratic primary with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, told a crowd in Covington, Kentucky, Sunday night that she would put her husband "in charge of revitalizing the economy, because, you know, he knows how to do it, and especially in places like coal country and inner cities and other parts of our country that have really been left out."

The declaration about Mr. Clinton’s potential place in a Hillary Clinton administration comes as her campaign is preparing to battle the likely Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump, and widening its efforts to win the support of white working-class voters. Those voters hold generally favorable opinions of Mr. Clinton, but view her with more skepticism.

Mr. Clinton’s more emotive style appears to resonate with blue-collar voters in ways Mrs. Clinton’s has not. Some 55 percent of voters nationwide said they do not believe Mrs. Clinton “cares about people like me,” according to a Quinnipiac poll conducted in February.

And Mr. Clinton’s record — a balanced budget, the creation of 22.7 million jobs and 7.7 million people lifted out of poverty — is in many ways simpler for Mrs. Clinton to pitch than Mr. Obama’s economic record, when economic growth has disproportionately benefited the wealthiest Americans.

“Hillary Clinton’s statement that if elected president she’d put Bill Clinton ‘in charge of revitalizing the economy … because, you know, he knows how to do it’ suggests she’s no longer touting the successes of the Obama economy, or even linking herself to it,” said Robert B. Reich, a secretary of labor during the Clinton administration who endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Democratic primary.