With Tuesday's Texas primary vital to keeping Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign afloat, the candidate sent her husband Sunday to a place few other national Democratic figures have bothered to visit -- College Station.

Former President Bill Clinton spoke to an enthusiastic crowd of several hundred in a meeting room at Reed Arena -- blocks from the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum. He last visited the area in 1997, along with other former presidents, for the opening of the library.

He thanked the crowd for hanging a sign on the wall proclaiming "Howdy Bill" before launching into a nearly hour-long stump speech outlining his wife's agenda and taking a few subtle jabs at Democratic opponent Barack Obama.

"There's no question if you haven't been around as long in the national consciousness you can claim to embody change," he said, not mentioning Obama by name. "The job of president is to make changes in other people's lives. You want a change-maker, and she is the best at that I have ever seen."

Obama has been deemed the victor in the last 11 states to have held nominating contests. Many political analysts have said Clinton needs wins in Texas and Ohio on Tuesday to stay a viable contender.

And so candidates for both sides and their proxies, such as Bill Clinton, are giving even Republican-heavy areas of the state, such as College Station, their attention.

"The polls say it's close," Clinton told the crowd, joking about the state's mixed primary-caucus system known as the Texas Two-Step. "This is the only place in America you can vote twice without breaking the law.

"I think it really is a selling point that you can do this and it's legal."

Though he was vague in his jabs at Obama, Clinton was crystal clear in his criticism of current President George W. Bush. The deficit, the economy and America's world-wide reputation have all been damaged, he said.

"This is not rocket science -- you have to turn this stuff around," he said.

He outlined what he said were three main problems: "persistent and growing" inequality, insecurity concerning terrorism and instability caused by global warming.

"You see in the past seven years an explosive growth of inequality," he said. "The truth is most Americans think we've been in a recession for some time."

Dealing with global warming, however, will create "millions and millions and millions" of jobs, he argued, explaining that it would benefit everyone from university graduates to high school dropouts -- who, he suggested, could find work retrofitting greener buildings.

Another necessity to turning around the economy, he said, is health care. He criticized the Obama plan, arguing that it would leave as many as 15 percent of citizens uninsured while Hillary Clinton's plan would cover everybody.

"You can't get control of costs if you don't cover everybody," he said. "Under Hillary's plan, you can keep what you've got if you want it ... but you can't be denied coverage. We're all going to be covered in huge pools.

"It will be way cheaper than anything you can get now. Everybody will be able to afford it."

Clinton spent much of the speech focusing on Iraq, explaining that troops need to be withdrawn in a way that won't make the situation worse. The country has to make some difficult decisions about who has power and who gets oil revenues, but that's not something the United States can fix, he said.

"My experience is people don't make hard decisions until they have to," he said. "People kick it on down the road, don't they?"

He equated the occupation and Iraq's dependent government to letting a neighbor whose home has burnt down sleep on the couch.

"If your neighbor is still on that couch after five years, it's not about the fire anymore," he said.

A line of residents wanting to attend the rally stretched around an entire side of Reed Arena as they waited in the rain Sunday afternoon. While some supporters of other candidates did attend the event, there were no loud outbursts comparable to those when Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy was invited to the Bush Library in 2003.

After the speech, Clinton spent about 10 minutes shaking hands with audience members before hitting the road for his next engagement, in Marshall. He did not take questions from the audience or the media.

Clinton also gave speeches Sunday in Houston, Wichita Falls and Abilene. He is scheduled to make campaign stops Monday in Corpus Christi, Edinburg, Brownsville, Laredo, Eagle Pass, Del Rio and El Paso.

He is one of many celebrities -- not all with political credentials -- paying College Station and other parts of Texas rare pre-primary attention. Actor Sean Astin of Goonies and Lord of the Rings was in town last week to voice support for Hillary Clinton, while The OC star Ben McKenzie and Fantastic Four star Kerry Washington visited Bryan for an Obama rally Friday.

"I have to confess, I'm a Longhorn," McKenzie told a crowd of about 150 people at Revolution in downtown Bryan before the group marched to the Brazos County Courthouse for early voting. "But that's what Barack is about -- bringing people together, even Longhorns and Aggies."

Actress Kate Walsh of Grey's Anatomy is expected to visit the Memorial Student Center on campus Monday afternoon during a rally for Obama.

• Staff Writer Tiffany Torres contributed to this report.

• Craig Kapitan's e-mail address is craig.kapitan@theeagle.com.

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