Ben?  I think you're over-analyzing just a wee bit.

I recall the Clinton years as being pretty damn partisan, especially the second term. Of course, the Clinton years were full of hope and unity within the Democratic party.

Overall, I think the difference is trivial, because time moves forward and it doesn't really matter what it was before, as long as we can get to where we want to be now.

Bill Clinton's speech to the Democratic convention got rave reviews—Andrew Sullivan thinks it was

This is something else that will mollify Democrats like me, who remain irked at Obama for his campaign strategy of reducing Bill Clinton's political legacy to Lewinsky, triangulation and Marc Rich's pardon.  The plain fact is that regardless of his talents -- and they are considerable -- Barack Obama can only hope to have as successful a presidency as Clinton did.  And while I'm enough of a political junkie to admit the utility of deploying that strategy against a second Clinton, I'm also enough of a Democrat to consider it just as low a road to travel as anything Bill had to say about Barack during the campaign.  And yes, that includes "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina."

So Bill gently and deftly gets a little of his own back tonight, sets the record straight, and maybe lays a small claim to the kind of campaign and the kind of legacy Barack Obama hopes to achieve.  Time for Obama supporters to be as gracious as the Clintons have been asked to be.  To admit that the Man From Hope remains the gold standard in modern Democratic politics, and that wishing for a future that looks something like "the Clinton Era" is not just misplaced nostalgia.

Quit trying to crowd the Clintons out of the party they built, and this family feud is over for good.  Barack Obama and his campaign seem to have accepted this -- one can only hope his most fervent and truculent supporters will leave it at that.

Strongly disagree Ben.

Clinton was underlining the already-established link between his effective leadership in achieving national security goals with a combination of a strong economic policy and a strong, but thoughtful, foreign policy. That's consistent with his endorsement of Obama as the leader to return us to those policies, and one who is also attacked as inexperienced.

"The partisan politics of the past" that Obama so correctly targets were practiced against the Clintons, not by them. Clinton performed  wonders by stealing the Republicans' best ideas and making them work.