Hillary most gifted person I have ever met, says Clinton

The dinner, the first time he has helped raise cash for his wife’s ambitions to represent New York in the Senate, allowed Clinton to reminisce about their youth and to proudly declare his wife "the most gifted person" he has ever met.

"The reason I noticed her in this class, to be honest, is that she attended it less frequently than I had," he told about 100 people who were asked to contribute 1,000 dollar each to dine with the Clintons on the Island Resort of Nantucket.

"So I followed her out of thisclass, and I got right behind her and I said, no, this is nothing but trouble’ and I turned around and walked off," he added. The two finally got together when Hillary Rodham slammed down her book in the Yale Law School library and walked over to introduce herself to Clinton, who by his own admission had been staring at her and had "kind of stalked her around" the campus for weeks.

The President joked that her approach displayed initiative – a good quality in a Senator – and sparked the romance that eventually led her to follow him to his home state of Arkansas two years later.

"I was very ambivalent about Hillary coming home to Arkansas," he said, adding that he had half-heartedly urged her to go to New York or Chicago to make her mark.

"I didn’t want her to, of course. I wanted her to go with me," the President said. "But I was so afraid I was, in effect, taking away from her life and from this country the most gifted person I had ever known up to that time." "Well, over 25 years later, I stillhaven’t met anybody I thought was as gifted," he added.

"And so, all she is really doing today is what I thought, for the benefit of the country and for the development of her own potential for service, maybe she should have been able to do in 1973," he said.

"I’m very glad she didn’t do it then, and very glad she is doing it today," he concluded.