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President Clinton speaks on Tuesday night in Brooklyn, Iowa.

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BROOKLYN, IOWA — Hillary Clinton’s campaign sent its biggest gun to one of the state’s smallest towns Tuesday night in a last-minute bid to stave off defeat at Thursday’s caucus here in Brooklyn, Iowa.

Former President Bill Clinton made a surprise stop in this town of 1,200 one day after The Brooklyn Paper reported that Brooklyn Mayor Loren Rickard, a lifelong Republican, would abandon his party to caucus for Democratic Sen. — and Clinton rival — Barack Obama.

Just a coincidence? Probably. Earlier in the day, the 42nd president was in Amana, about 50 miles east of here, and Brooklyn is one of many rural towns between there and Clinton’s final destination of the day, Des Moines.

“Most likely, [Brooklyn] was just a good place to stop in between,” said the local Democratic precinct captain Bev Rens, who claims she helped make Brooklyn’s Republican mayor an Obama man.

Rens is so loyal to the Illinois senator that she announced from the outset that the former president would be unable to convince her to switch loyalties.

“There’s nothing he could say,” Rens said, as 200 of her fellow townspeople filed into the Brooklyn-Guernsey-Malcolm school for the Clinton speech. “I liked him as a president, but he’s not running this time. She is.”

In his subdued hour-long speech, Clinton showed little of the rock star quality he has brought to other events, though he did get a laugh when he said he had proven his love for his wife by making speeches all day on New Year’s Day and missing six televised bowl games.

But after that laugh line, Clinton was interrupted only a few times by mild applause as he suggested that his wife is the most experienced, most talented, and most likely to survive the inevitable Republican smear campaign. (Truth be told, Clinton also spent ample time highlighting the successes of his administration, such as job creation and budget balancing.)

“She has been an agent of change all her life,” he said, citing work to improve education in Arkansas (which he said was a success) and on the Clinton health care plan (which he admitted was a failure).

“A lot of people say that’s a reason to vote against her, but I disagree 100 percent,” he said. “You need to know how your president is going to handle failure. … Your president will not win every day. Just like you don’t. … She got up and dusted herself off and we got the children’s health insurance program that insured six million kids, the biggest expansion in healthcare since Medicare.”

He suggested that only the former first lady has “the best combination of mind and heart and strength and compassion” to lead the nation.

“Based on what I know about being president, I believe Hillary is the best candidate I’ve had the chance to support in my 40 years as a voter,” he said.

Few seemed to agree with him. In fact, one of the people sitting on the stage to provide a supportive backdrop for Clinton was none other than Joel Rickard, the mayor’s son and another Obama supporter.

“I do think Hillary would be a good president,” the younger Rickard said afterwards, though he complimented the former president for “looking sharp” in a flattering burnt-orange shirt. “But I’m still supporting Obama.”

That sentiment whipped through the school gym like a 20-mile-per-hour wind through the Great Plains.

“I still think Joe Biden is the strongest candidate,” said Brian Burmeister, who said his main issue is the crisis in Darfur. “But Biden can’t win, so I’m going to caucus for Obama. I like Bill, but I like Obama more.”

The lack of clapping even after some of the former president’s sure-fire applause lines surprised a reporter from the East Coast Brooklyn, but longtime Brooklyn, Iowa, resident Diane Davidson explained that the caucuses are so important that Iowans don’t want to waste valuable time with ovations.

“We were really listening hard to what he was saying and trying to take it really seriously,” she said.

©2008 The Brooklyn Paper