When President Clinton walked into the third floor ballroom at the Charles Hotel in Harvard Square on Friday, he proved one thing — nobody in politics does it like Bill Clinton.

The political skills of the current crop of candidates — Republicans and Democrats — are vastly inferior to those of the former president. Armed with only a single sheet with notes scrawled in blue ink, Mr. Clinton waxed poetic on health care, the environment, nuclear proliferation, and economic development.

The crowd of policy wonks, Harvard staffers, and general enthusiasts treated Mr. Clinton with a rock star status, greeting his presence for Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government conference, “The Looming Crisis; Can We Act In Time?” with hoots and cheers.

Harvard’s new president, Drew Faust, who was meeting Mr. Clinton for the first time, greeted him saying, “I remember so many stories that are legendary about him.” The Kennedy School of Government’s dean, David Ellwood, a former Clinton aide, said, “no person connected more readily to the lives of people … than President Clinton.”

The uniqueness of Mr. Clinton lies not just in his ability to connect with people, nor just in his ability to speak in hopeful, elevating rhetoric, nor just in his uncanny ability to master details of policy. As a politician, Mr. Clinton is an alchemist who can do all of these things. With crowds, he is a magician, a sorcerer. No other active politician comes close to that.

Consider the Democratic field. Senator Obama draws raves for his soaring oratory. But, thus far, he hasn’t delved far into policy. Indeed, his forays have provided little detail. John Edwards can sometimes work a room like the seasoned trial attorney he is, yet his attempts at compassion fall flat compared to Mr. Clinton in his prime.

As a former state legislator and senator since only 2004, Mr. Obama hasn’t had the time to master the intricacies of policy the way Mr. Clinton, a former governor for more than a decade, did. Unlike Mr. Clinton who went out of his way to chastise the racial demagogue of his election cycle, Sister Souljah, Mr. Obama curried favor with Reverend Al Sharpton.

And then there is Senator Clinton. She needs Mr. Clinton to help raise funds and to motivate opinion leaders, such as the Harvard audience. She, however, risks appearing wooden and calculating in comparison to her husband.

A former advisor to Mr. Clinton and a professor at the Kennedy School of Government, David Gergen, says Mr. Clinton can remind voters of the good times during his term — the strong economy, the balanced budget, etc.

Mr. Clinton runs the risk of overpowering his wife though so the best solution for that is to make sure the former president speaks on her behalf, but on his own as a surrogate. “He’s in a league by himself as a public policy speaker,” Mr. Gergen says. “There’s no one in either party and there hasn’t been for some time who can be as mesmerizing and encyclopedic.”

For Republicans, the operative icon is not Mr. Clinton, but Ronald Reagan, at whose presidential library the candidates gathered for a debate last week. There, the candidates carried themselves with neither the ease nor the charm of Reagan nor the rote political skills of Mr. Clinton.

Senator McCain came across as serious, but not elevating. Rudy Giuliani, more a man of doing than a man of speaking, bungled this first contest. Although Mitt Romney demonstrated verbal fluidity, nonetheless, he seemed somewhat calculating. It’s not that the political calculation isn’t always there for Mr. Clinton, it’s just that he masks it better than most.

On most policy grounds, Mr. Clinton raised the expected Democratic subject, and then went in a different and unexpected direction. In speaking about health care, he talked about the dangers of childhood obesity and rising rates of diabetes, not about greedy insurers. He spoke about the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, yet he chose to levy blame on a 30-year destruction of the wetlands around New Orleans, not the Bush Administration.

His domestic policy solutions were often counter-intuitive, such as cutting health care costs by putting the focus on the patient and shoring up wetlands before disaster strikes.

The exception to his policies was foreign affairs, where he called for more international engagement to address the issue of Iran. He also claimed that a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs would take the wind out of Al Qaeda’s sails — despite the facts recited by Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Dore Gold, who is the author of “Hatred’s Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism.” In an interview with Mr. Gold, he said that Al Qaeda grew more brazen as the peace negations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority intensified.

Even so, when Mr. Clinton’s hour and a half address ended last week, he was swarmed by admirers. They took his photo with their cell phones and thrust copies of his book into his face. The frenzy lasted so much so that the hotelier had to flick the lights to give everyone the single that it was time for Mr. Clinton to leave.

Today’s presidential aspirants have one thread of hope from the man of Hope. Four years before he became the nominee, Mr. Clinton flopped at the Democratic National Convention. When I saw him in the summer of 1992 in Boston — down in the polls and prior to choosing Al Gore as his running mate — his speech was met with disinterest.

At some point, he became the president we all know. Perhaps in the cauldron of battle we call the presidential election process, one of the current candidates will find his or her voice and achieve the Clinton Magic.

Mr. Gitell (gitell.com) is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.