Much has been made of Vice President Al Gore’s failure, back in 2000, to fully utilize President Bill Clinton on the campaign trail during the general election contest against then Governor George Bush.  Many unhappy democrats — when they got done blaming Ralph Nader, David Boies, elderly Floridians, the butterfly ballot, etc. — complained that had Gore just used Clinton more in the campaign he would surely have won the election.  Well, fast forward to 2008, where former President Clinton is a constant fixture both in his wife Hillary’s Presidential campaign and in those sort of headlines which that self-same campaign dreads, and maybe Mr. Gore doesn’t look so foolish after all.

First we had the roundly condemmed series of unfortunate comments in New Hampshire and South Carolina, “Fairy tale” or “Jesse Jackson won South Carolina…“.  Now we have Bill’s innaccurate and distracting attempts to defend Mrs. Clinton against the press infactuation with her inflated and inaccurate remarks about her visit to Bosnia in 1996.  In this latest round he has managed to reintroduce, much to the press’ delight, an issue which had finally died down, and gave it new currency, with just over a week left before Pennsylvania votes.

It is looking as though unless he himself is the candidate Mr. Clinton is not such a sure asset on the stump after all.