Napa Valley is known as a place to get campaign cash, but its modest population usually precludes it from being a pit stop on a presidential campaign.  So why would former President Bill Clinton come to Napa?

“Because we want to win in Northern California,” Clinton said Wednesday. “And besides, I like it here.”

Nearly 800 people made it inside the Napa Valley Opera House Wednesday afternoon to hear Clinton stump for his wife for about 90 minutes.

Clinton addressed a range of complex issues, including health care and foreign policy, but his point about Hillary Clinton was simple: “She’s good at making things better for other people.”

The former president hammered out policy points from Hillary Clinton’s campaign, including the need for universal health care, re-writing the federal No Child Left Behind law, increasing student loan aid to boost college attendance and making a green transformation of the country work to its economic benefit.

“We can do all of these things and create jobs in America,” he said, adding with his wife’s leadership the country could produce a class of “green collar workers” engaged in jobs that help the environment.

It’s a message the Clintons are trying to get out in as many primary states as they can before the Feb. 5 primary, when Californians will likely have a major voice in cementing the Democratic nomination for either Hillary or Sen. Barack Obama.

For several months polls have consistently shown Hillary Clinton as the leading Democrat among California voters. A USA Today/Gallup poll of likely Democratic voters taken Jan. 10 -13 shows Clinton with a 45 percent to 33 percent lead over her closest rival, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

On the Republican side, a CNN/LA Times poll taken at the same time shows a very tight race among four candidates. Arizona Sen. John McCain has 20 percent in that poll, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney 16 percent, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani 14 percent and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee 13 percent.

Other polls show Giuliani faring better in California.

But Bill Clinton didn’t mention polls of any kind when he talked to Napa residents Wednesday, going so far as to compliment his wife’s rivals as a field he liked the “feel” of. Above all, he tried to position his wife as someone that would put the country on the right track.

“So how will you know how Hillary keeps score in public life?” he said. “There are two things that matter: Are people better off when you stop than you started, and are your children and grandchildren going to have a bright future? The rest is smoke and mirrors.”

Clinton said Hillary would close tax loopholes “that don’t make sense” and reduce the tax burden on the middle class to help jump-start a sluggish economy. He also said the nation’s dependence on oil, combined with the burgeoning federal deficit, was harming the nation.

“We have put ourselves in economic bondage,” he said.

He threw no verbal punches at Hillary’s Democratic rivals, but had criticism for the Bush administration.

“The current administration has divided us socially, economically and politically,” he said, adding his wife would be a president that would be able to unite the country domestically while also putting out the message to America’s allies that “America is open for business.”

At points Clinton stopped and told stories, including a poignant one about a man who was both a New York City firefighter and a golf caddy.

The man had been among those who combed the devastation of ground zero after the 9/11 attacks, looking for the living in the wreckage. Clinton said the man caught him by surprise on a New York golf course to share his thanks for Hillary’s fight to get ground zero workers medical care for the toxic fumes they were inhaling.

Clinton said the man told him, “She knew, she stood up and she fought for us.”

Clinton took several questions from the audience after his speech, including a pointed query from one person who wondered how electable a woman would be among American men.

Clinton said Hillary was only unpopular among the “people who don’t know her” and cautioned the audience about getting too wrapped up in gender politics.

“You have to decide what this election is about,” he said, later saying of Hillary, “She’s not about giving in.”

One boy in the audience drew acclaim when he asked Clinton what his wife’s plan to end the Iraq war was.

Clinton said having American troops in Iraq was a part of Iraq’s political problem.

“We’re pulling for them to succeed, but we’re not doing any favors for them,” he said, adding the U.S. military was worn too thin by the war and it is needed to fight terrorism in Afghanistan.

Yet Clinton said withdrawal from Iraq couldn’t happen simply by loading up U.S. service members and equipment and driving to the Kuwait border — the U.S. needs to plan to make sure its people are safely withdrawn. That also means offering the opportunity for a life in America to Iraqis who aided the U.S. in the Iraq war.

Clinton also said the U.S. may need to keep troops in Kurdistan, in the north of Iraq, to keep a Kurdistani-Turk war from igniting a regional conflict.