Obama Benefits from Spat with Bill Clinton

The emerging conventional wisdom seems to be that Sen. Barack Obama has made a huge mistake by engaging former President Bill Clinton on some of Clinton’s attacks against him. Clinton was, after all, a fairly popular Democratic president. He served two terms. He has a legacy. And I’ve heard of polls that measure his current favorability ratings among Democrats around 80%.

The conventional wisdom is wrong. Obama will benefit from the highly publicized arguments with Bill Clinton.

1. Arguing with Bill Clinton makes Obama look presidential.

The top political headlines in today’s newspapers will continue driving the “Bill Clinton v. Barack Obama” story line. Former presidents don’t usually bother themselves with petty criticisms of first-term Senators, but something makes Obama special enough to get that kind of treatment. Every time the former president says Obama’s name, Obama seems more presidential.

2. It keeps Hillary Clinton’s name out of the paper.

When reporters cover the spat, they generally only make reference to Hillary Clinton, the one who is actually running for President, as an afterthought. Stories make first reference to her as merely “his wife,” and they mention only that the former president was campaigning for her before quickly turning back to the subject at hand. Here’s Exhibit A.

3. Former Presidents don’t win “change” elections.

Although the term “change election” bothers me to no end, I’m told that this is one. The former president makes a compelling argument to the contrary (I’ve heard it on the campaign trail), but the 2008 definition of “change” does not mean “defeating an incumbent Republican president in 1992.” Whatever the hell “change” means, Bill Clinton probably isn’t its poster boy. He shouldn’t be making more news for the Clinton campaign than his wife.

Maybe Bill Clinton’s attacks on Obama do hurt Obama, but they hurt Hillary Clinton more.