SANTA FE, N.M. — Five different times, aides tried to drag him away from the booth where Josh Brody, a 24-year-old supporter of Bernie Sanders, was holding forth about all that had gone wrong in the 1990s: welfare, NAFTA, Wall Street.

"Other people are waiting," one staffer said, stepping forward.

"I think we're gonna agree to disagree here, guys," he tried again.

“All right, Mr. President. These folks are waiting,” a second aide said.

But for more than 30 minutes, Bill Clinton stayed to argue every point, turning a routine retail stop at Tia Sophia's, a New Mexican restaurant here in Santa Fe, into a one-on-one debate with Brody, a recent graduate of New York's New School, who said he supported Hillary Clinton's Democratic challenger. "For the next few weeks — then I’ll be a Stein supporter,” he added of Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

The encounter on Wednesday was emblematic of a presidential election driven by questions about the politics of the 1990s — and the legacy of the Clinton years. On the campaign trail, when confronted with a voter on the rope line or a heckler in the crowd, Clinton is often unwilling to let his record go undefended.

But the protracted back-and-forth was also a testament to Clinton's view — one he repeats often on the trail — that politicians and their opponents don't spend enough time listening to one another anymore. This spring, after an encounter with activists from the Black Lives Matter movement, Clinton vowed to try to close that gap. “I realized finally I was talking past [the protester] the way she was talking past me,” he said. “We gotta stop that in this country. We gotta listen to each other.”

The conversation here began when Clinton approached Brody's booth. The young Sanders supporter, a Santa Fe native, appeared to decline a handshake with the former president, instead posing a question about “aid to families with dependent children."

It didn't take long for Clinton and Brody to dive deep into the 1990s, sparring about welfare reform and education spending, New Democrats and New Deal Democrats, and the former president’s Wall Street legislation, which Brody likened to “a golden parachute straight from the Treasury Department.”

“It’s a nice little narrative," Clinton shot back.



Beside Brody, three friends ate their egg dishes in silence.