When you've set aside the weight of elected leadership, let go many of the ties to official Washington, shrugged off duty to political partisanship and can earn more money in a week on the speaking circuit than you made in a year as leader of the free world, life gets just a little easier.

Addressing a Canadian-American relations conference in London last night, the 42nd president of the United States was free to stand behind a transparent lecturn and deliver a favourable, if sometimes revisionist, history of his own presidency. He could bathe in the adulation of a Canadian audience that enveloped him as warmly as the big leather chair in which he later took questions. And he could tease his listeners with the new persona he is so ardently constructing.

Bill Clinton has always been good at re-inventing himself. He did it several times as governor of Arkansas. He did it when the Democrats nominated him to break the Reagan-Bush stranglehold on the White House. He did it again when the Newt Gingrich-inspired neo-conservatism swept Capitol Hill in the mid-1990s. And he did once more when his moral failings threatened to destroy his family and impeach his presidency.

If he were software, we might call this latest version Clinton 7.0. It is Bill Clinton the multilateralist. Clinton the environmentalist. Clinton the humanitarian. Clinton the philanthropist. And, for all his fears of the future -- pandemics, terrorism, unsecured biological and chemical agents -- Clinton the optimist.

Finally, for those whose memories of his years in the White House are still imprinted by his angry assertion that he "did not have sex with that woman -- Miss Lewinsky," and his bald-faced lies to both his spouse and the nation that elected him, there is also Bill Clinton the devoted and supportive spouse who will now go to any lengths to see the junior senator from New York realize her highest aspirations.

Clinton is a man adept at precisely tailoring his message to the audience his is addressing. And so last night's remarks included observations that "America can learn a lot from Canada" in terms of assistance to the developing world. That the softwood lumber dispute between the two countries is, in the long sweep of history, a minor irritant that should be negotiated away -- besides, it is only a symptom of a more "intractable insecurity" that will bubble to the surface again in another part of our trade relationships. That America should not have invaded Iraq until after UN weapons inspectors had concluded their work. That Canada and other nations need to speak forcefully and bluntly to the U.S. when they have strong and principled (rather than "craven") objections to American policy. To Canadian ears, it was American music.

But Clinton's transformation, or its illusion, could also be seen in his statements that compassionate world leaders can only spring from national economies that are strong and secure. That the current rate of climate change is so unsustainable that, if the global community doesn't act quickly, "we are playing Russian roulette with at least our great-grandchildren."

As for optimism, the former president pointed to efforts such as his own Global Initiative, that are making real the promise of people power -- where ordinary citizens around the world are achieving what governments do sloppily or not at all.

The two factors that will continue to change the world and its politics in the years to come, he said, are the Internet and non-governmental agencies -- because they're not constrained by politics, but rather powered by imagination.

Near the evening's end, moderator Susan Ormiston asked Clinton whether he'd ever contemplate a return to the White House as president. He didn't rule it out, preferring to commit again to Hillary's career.

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