Citizen Bill Clinton was back in Arkansas last week and the crowds that greeted him
couldn't have been happier if Elvis had returned from the dead.

Tanned and fit, the former president kept a busy schedule. He paid tribute to an old friend
at Children's Hospital, strolled through the River Market, scheduled a visit to a young friend's
T-ball game and met with architects of his presidential library.

The president also dropped by the Arkansas Times' Best of Arkansas party.  Clinton wasn't
a first-place winner, just an honorable mention behind Gov. Mike Huckabee. But a crowd of
Arkies was on hand. That was red meat for the old campaigner, who only the week before had
crashed a wedding party near a golf course in England just to keep his handshaking skills honed.

It's hard in retrospect to see how readers picked Huckabee, except on the technicality of residence,
though the Bro.-Gov. is indeed a formidable politico. For more than an hour, Clinton displayed the
skills that carried him from a small Arkansas town to the world's most prominent office. It was like
going to an Old Timers' baseball game and seeing Nolan Ryan could still chunk a 100-mph fastball.

The former president is accompanied by a security detail, but it's small, maybe four or five people
in close proximity. And they don't form a barrier between the president and friendly hordes.
They stand back watchfully while Clinton works a crowd. He often plunged across the room
to shake the hand of an Arkansan he hadn't seen in eight years or more.

Clinton outlasted most of the partygoers, even with free booze and food on hand. He moved from
one end of the entry hall of the Historic Arkansas Museum to the other, posing for pictures here,
hugging an old friend there, patting many a baby's head. I wasn't with him the whole way, but in my
few minutes nearby, I heard fluid commentary on everything from an economic development program
in India to his wife's legislative initiatives for children to the outrageous Supreme Court decision that
gave the presidency to George W. Bush to the stunted intellectual curiosity of millionaire Texans to
solicitous inquiries, by name, about friends' children.

The morals of this story? Bill Clinton still has political magic. He's still energized by friendly crowds.
And he still has many friends, maybe more now that the Bush administration has fully revealed itself.

Practical point: No one is lukewarm about Bill Clinton, who seems likely to be an influential world
player for years. to come. The city was right to do whatever it took to nail down a site for his library.
It's past time to put the legal controversies to bed and build it. They will come to see it, friend and
dogged foe. And Bill Clinton will never stop trying to convert the latter.