And as he shared details of their courtship for a good eight minutes, he imbued Mrs. Clinton with the aura of a sexual being. Not even Jackie Kennedy did that for Jack.  “In the spring of 1971, I met a girl,” Mr. Clinton began, sounding like a narrator in an old Philip Roth novel or like a confessional letter to Esquire. “After the class, I followed her out, intending to introduce myself,” he continued, recalling that his confidence abandoned him. “Somehow, I knew this would not be just another tap on the shoulder, that I might be starting something I couldn’t stop.”  Mr. Clinton delivered a long, personal recounting of the life of Mrs. Clinton, calling her a “change maker” and contrasted his account with the way she was portrayed at the Republican convention last week.  Not everyone appreciated the former president’s lingering over his early attraction to the 23-year-old Hillary Rodham. Rachel Maddow, the MSNBC host, called it “shocking and weird,” and suggested it diminished Mrs. Clinton’s many accomplishments.  “It was a controversial way to start, honestly, talking about the girl, a girl, leading with this long story about him being attracted to an unnamed girl and thinking about whether he was starting something he couldn’t finish, building her whole political story, for the whole first half of the speech around her marriage to him,” Ms. Maddow said.  But Mr. Clinton clearly wanted to tell Mrs. Clinton’s story through the lens of their courtship and 40-year marriage.  This was an audacious strategy, given that their marriage is one of the most complicated and contentious in modern politics. One of his fiercest declarations — “she will never quit when the going gets tough, she will never quit on you” — could not help but conjure up his history of infidelities. In doing so, he humanized a marriage that has baffled many Americans while also reminding people of his philandering and her compromises.  The approach was “a risky one given the fact that the speaker has famously not maintained Mrs. Clinton as the sole object of his sexual desire in the ensuing 45 years since she first caught his eye,” said Katherine Jellison, a professor of history at Ohio University who focuses on women and gender.  CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times  Mr. Clinton’s bet was that by talking so personally about Mrs. Clinton, voters would envision qualities that they want in a president. He also hoped people would see through what Mr. Clinton called the “cartoon” image of Mrs. Clinton as a dishonest and untrustworthy figure. A majority of American voters see her that way, according to polls, an image that Mr. Clinton links to Republicans and other political enemies, as well as the news media. He used his speech to offer a loving and layered portrait instead, recalling how Mrs. Clinton struggled to leave their daughter at college on move-in day, and how they cried together on Tuesday morning over the death of an old friend.  Whether his speech causes people to see Mrs. Clinton differently — or makes people uncomfortable with the Clinton marriage all over again — will become clearer in time, not only through polls but also in the chatter among voters.  And while Ms. Maddow and others offered a critique of Mr. Clinton’s portrait, clearly uncomfortable with the framing of the first female major party nominee as an attractive girl, the speech seemed less directed at them and more at the voters who cannot warm to Mrs. Clinton.  After all, polls already show that Americans believe Mrs. Clinton is up to the job; they just are not sure they like her enough to elect her to do it.  Clinton haters will surely be unmoved. And skeptics may have a hard time absorbing anything new about Mrs. Clinton after living with her in the public spotlight for more than 20 years.  Milestones in politics when women and minorities were first elected to federal, state and local government.  Yet there is something undeniably endearing about a husband celebrating “that big laugh of hers,” as Mr. Clinton did, or admitting that his wife took a big gamble moving to Arkansas and marrying him.  “His deeply personal language also struck and moved me, and especially his seeing her as a sexual person and someone he desired as well as a highly intelligent person, capable of getting things done,” said Carol Gilligan, an expert in gender studies and a professor at New York University. She added: “It also struck me as profoundly democratic: she’s a human being — not a god — living in a woman’s body.”  Political wives often make their husbands sound like saints. Mr. Clinton made Mrs. Clinton sound likable, which is no small thing in politics.  “I married my best friend,” he said. “I have lived a long, full, blessed life. It really took off when I met and fell in love with that girl in the spring of 1971.”  His implication was obvious. America would really take off as well, if voters would just fall in love with that girl, too.  An earlier version of this article misquoted Rachel Maddow on Bill Clinton’s speech Tuesday night at the Democratic National Convention, when he discussed his attraction to Hillary Clinton when she was 23. Ms. Maddow said it was “shocking and weird.” She did not say it was shocking and rude.
Viewers of Mr. Clinton’s convention speech may have felt admiration, or unease, as the former president used intimate details to depict an attractive “girl” who changed his life.