DES MOINES – Amid growing speculation of his wife’s bid to become the next president, former President Bill Clinton asked Iowa Democrats on Saturday to forget about 2008 and focus on the Nov. 7 midterm elections.

Clinton, who spoke during the Iowa Democratic Party’s annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner at the Iowa Events Center’s Hy-Vee Hall, criticized Republican leadership in Washington on a range of issues and promoted Democratic candidates for national and state offices.

He painted the Bush administration as out of touch with the middle class and concerned with expanding the powers of the executive branch.

“The entire government of the United States – Congress, the White House and even the courts – has been for the last six years under the control of the most right wing, the most conservative sliver of the Republican Party,” he said.

Clinton agreed with the assertion made in a classified intelligence document leaked to the press in late September that Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq has created an unstable environment that may encourage terrorist activity.

“Our current policy in Iraq has created more terrorists than it’s killed or curtailed,” he said.

He promoted alternative energy as a means of reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil and securing the country, and he called on Iowa to play a leading role in the production of alternative energy sources.

“The best thing we can do for national security is to embrace a clean and independent energy policy,” he said.

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Clinton called on Congress to restore funding to college student-loan programs after a $12.7 million cut was included in a budget reconciliation package that passed last spring.

“As for education,” he said, “I think we ought to restore cuts to college aid programs.”

Republicans have defended the cuts, arguing that they target lending institutions and don’t effect students.

Clinton’s wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., has said she will decide after the Nov. 7 election if she will make a run at the White House.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chet Culver also stressed the importance of alternative energy during his remarks at the event.

“We’ll be the first state in the nation to declare our independence from foreign oil,” Culver said.

He said Iowa’s strength lies not only in biomass technology, but also in other forms of alternative energy such as wind and solar energy.

ISU College Republicans president Donald McDowell, junior in political science, disagreed with Clinton’s assertion that only a small minority of the most conservative Republicans run their party.

“I think Congress has been very sharply divided and [Republicans and Democrats] have worked together quite well,” McDowell said.

He dismissed the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner as a “pep rally” for a Democratic Party facing an important election.

“I think what Clinton is doing is trying to rally up a Democratic base that is very much beleaguered right now,” he said.