Is the former president an admired statesman or a nasty foe to Obama?

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DENVER - There are three surviving former presidents in the United States, but none fascinate as much as the youngest and most dynamic in the group: Bill Clinton.

Clinton established a lucrative niche for himself as an adored senior statesman and sought-after public speaker when he left the White House after two terms in 2000, but that was before his wife's unsuccessful run for the presidency.

A new and startlingly different Clinton emerged during Hillary Clinton's bid to become the Democratic presidential candidate. He's been accused of contributing heavily to his wife's loss because of what many describe as his nasty, down-in-the-gutter attempts to ensure she beat Barack Obama.

At the Democratic National Convention this week in Denver, where the country's 42nd president was scheduled to speak last night, some defended Clinton as a man who was simply looking out for his wife during the heat of battle.

"That's one of the things I admire about him -- he's a real spouse and he reacts the way a real spouse does," Howard Wilson, former communications director for Hillary Clinton's campaign, said earlier this week in this Colorado city.

"He didn't like when his wife was attacked, and he responded accordingly, and that's the way I hope my spouse would have reacted if I was attacked."

James Carville, a longtime Clinton confidante, was coy outside the Pepsi Center when asked what his former boss would say or do to heal the rifts.

"He'll say a lot," a grinning Carville said on the eve of Clinton's speech. "He's got a lot of thoughts, and he'll come up with a lot of good things."

For all the private and public turmoil in their marriage, it's clear Clinton is a man fiercely protective of his wife. Some say he's taken her loss even harder than she has, feeling she was not treated with the respect she deserved by the Obama team.

Others say Clinton's behaviour during his wife's campaign was unseemly and beneath him.

"He's sort of yesterday's man trying to be today's man and he seems angry about it," said Shawn Bowler, a political scientist at the University of California at Riverside.

"He doesn't seem to know what to do with himself, and focused so much energy on his wife's campaign and when it didn't go their way, he got quite nasty."