He was against him before he was for him.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton was often at angry odds with the man who defeated his wife.

Now, in the final weeks of the 2010 midterm campaign, Clinton is stumping hard to help his onetime foe — and has emerged as one of the most important defender of President Barack Obama’s congressional majorities. Some candidates are asking for his help on the campaign trail, rather than the president’s. Even though Clinton insisted Monday that he was only "peripherally and fleetingly" back in politics, he has been headlining rallies and fundraisers across the country to buck up the depressed party faithful.

"They shouldn’t take this lying down," Clinton said during a meeting with reporters and editors of The New York Times.

Blaming Republican policies for digging the deep hole the economy is in, he said the Democrats needed to plead with voters for more time to turn things around.

"I think we ought to say, ‘Look, don’t go back to the shovel brigade — give us two more years; if you don’t feel better you can throw us all out,"’ he said.

Clinton professes more interest in pressing humanitarian problems like clearing rubble in earthquake-ravaged Port-au-Prince — the stuff of his day job at his Clinton Global Initiative charitable organization — than monitoring turnout projections in Portsmouth, N.H.

In an interview that lasted more than 90 minutes, Clinton talked passionately about his plans for the annual meeting this week of his nonprofit organization, the need to more aggressively develop green industries and to improve educational opportunities for women around the world.

But Clinton has not lost his fluency, and grasp of granular detail, in politics. For instance, he readily recalled the number of voters in a recent election for county executive in Westchester County, where he lives.

Clinton at times spoke in the apocalyptic terms of his party’s more dejected activists.

"I hope they can avoid a calamity," Clinton said at one point, hastening to add, "And I think they can.

"If the election is about anger and apathy colored by amnesia, we’re in deep trouble," he said. "If the election is about what are we going to do now and who’s more likely to do that, the president and the Congress have a real chance to come out of this fine."

He called this year only "partly" a replay of 1994, the first midterm election of his presidential tenure, when Democrats lost their majorities in Congress.

"The Republicans are not led as adroitly as they were when Newt Gingrich had a whole plan," he said.

On the other hand, he said, Gingrich, who took over as speaker of the House in 1994, was willing to work with the White House post-election, while this year’s Republicans are promising gridlock.

Whatever his feelings about Obama in 2008, Clinton is clearly feeling the president’s strain.

"Most of the things they’re saying about him they said about me, so I’m much more sympathetic to him than most people," he said. "And when you get in there, if you’re an earnest policy wonk like he is and I was, it’s hard to believe there are people who really don’t want you to do your job."

In the past two weeks Clinton has campaigned for candidates in Ohio, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania, with plans to appear in Massachusetts and California in the days ahead. He has been a guest on the "Daily Show," "Meet the Press" and even on the Fox News Channel, on "On the Record with Greta Van Susteren" on Monday night.

"He’s welcome anywhere in the country," said Gov. Edward G. Rendell, D-Pa., who spent a day campaigning with Clinton around Philadelphia last week. "He’s all upside and no downside."

The Big Dog, as he is known among those in the tight world of Clinton associates, is actually a more diminutive dog these days — so slimmed down that the "Meet the Press" moderator, David Gregory, asked him Sunday, "Are you OK?" (The once voracious consumer of junk food says he lost weight at the insistence of his daughter, Chelsea, before her wedding in July, and credited a new heart-healthy diet.)

Obama, of course, is also the boss of Clinton’s wife, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. And there is something in it for Clinton, too. Any microphone or tape recorder is a two-fer for him, giving him a chance to talk up his global works, as well as discuss politics. On Monday, for example, he urged donors to give more so he can hire more staff for the daunting rebuilding efforts in Haiti.

Clinton said he began making appearances only because Hillary Clinton, in her current position, is forbidden to engage in politicking.

"So there was nobody besides me to honor the people that supported her," he said.

It "became something more," he added, when he realized how angry the electorate was, and how people did not appreciate what he described as the Democrats’ accomplishments on student loans, jobs, health care and the economy.

On the trail, he tweaks his remarks depending on which Democrat he is speaking for — a different speech for a candidate who supported health care than for one who did not.

He does not find it awkward that candidates want him at their side, rather than the current occupant of the White House.

"In ’94," he said, "some of them didn’t want me."

© 2010 The New York Times Company