Conservative commentators like Maureen Dowd

argue that Bill Clinton’s more recent

“outbursts” had somehow damaged

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign

Yet Obama may find he has committed

the more expensive error by attacking Bill Clinton

Obama runs a risk by turning on Bill Clinton for his campaign role.

There is certainly a case against the former president. Yet it smacks of hubris to attack the most popular Democrat in the country at such a time.

Obama may find he has committed the more expensive error.

Bill Clinton’s Strategic Outbursts

Conservative commentators like Maureen Dowd argue that Bill Clinton’s more recent “outbursts” had somehow damaged Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Even Joe Klein, the quintessential 'establishment' columnist, who is sympathetic and well-connected to the Clintons, recently speculated that the former president’s behavior might be attributed to a subconscious desire on his part to see his wife’s campaign fail.

And in the new issue of Newsweek, we learn that both Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Illinois Representative Rahm Emmanuel — the architect of the 2006 Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives who once worked in the Clinton White House — have voiced their concerns to the former president that his, shall we say, “combative” approach to campaigning has done more harm than good.

And yet Senator Clinton’s recent string of success continues. She has won close, hard-won victories in the New Hampshire primary and the Nevada caucuses.

She has the opportunity to outperform expectations this week in South Carolina, and is in a strong position to win major state contests on Super Tuesday.

Mr. Clinton’s comments to the talk show host Charlie Rose in December that America would be “rolling the dice” by electing Barack Obama;

His rambling description in New Hampshire of Obama’s Iraq record as a “fairy tale”;

His aggressive response to a question from a television news reporter in Nevada concerning an abstruse legal battle over caucus rules — each display of emotion has earned headlines and the disapproval of American opinion makers, but has also done little to stop the Clinton Restoration from progressing.

Why? The simplest answer is that while large swaths of the American opinion elite suffer from Clinton fatigue, the Democratic primary electorate does not.

Reading the New Hampshire primary exit poll, we find that 83 percent of New Hampshire Democratic primary voters had a favorable opinion of President Clinton, and that Senator Clinton beat Senator Obama among these voters by 10 points.

By contrast, among the 16 percent of Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire who held an unfavorable view of President Clinton, Senator Obama won 50 percent to 13 percent.

Another exit poll question asked voters whether they would vote for Bill Clinton if he were eligible and on the ballot.

Most voters said no, they would vote for the candidate whom they supported anyway — and Obama won these voters handily.

But 37 percent of respondents said yes, they would vote for Bill Clinton if he were on the ballot — and Senator Clinton won these voters by 34 points.

It was understood among New Hampshire Democrats that, whatever Senator Clinton’s qualifications and talents, a vote for her is, in a way, another vote for her husband.

It’s been said that Mr. Clinton’s recent feistiness has revealed a side of him previously unknown to most Americans.

But this is incorrect: he is rather a master of what one might call “strategic emotion,” the use of tears or anger to comfort voters or intimidate the press.

During his presidency Clinton lashed out at, among others, then-ABC White House correspondent Brit Hume in 1993; reporters who continued to raise questions about his involvement with Monica Lewinsky in 1998; and the Senate Republicans who rejected the 1999 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

These days the former president’s “outbursts” serve a dual purpose: they lend the impression that Senator Clinton is the insurgent running against the media-supported Obama, while also creating the illusion that it is the former president, not his wife, who is actually the candidate for the Democratic nomination.

Far from hurting Senator Clinton — who also understands how to deploy strategic emotion, as we saw before the New Hampshire Democratic primary — former President Clinton effectively has rallied a coalition of Democrats to her cause.

Two Against One

If Bill Clinton has to trash his legacy to protect his legacy, so be it. If he has to put a dagger through the heart of hope to give Hillary hope, so be it.

If he has to preside in this state as the former first black president stopping the would-be first black president, so be it.

The Clintons — or “the 2-headed monster,” as the The New York Post dubbed the tag team that clawed out wins in New Hampshire and Nevada — always go where they need to go, no matter the collateral damage. Even if the damage is to themselves and their party.

Bill’s transition from elder statesman, leader of his party and bipartisan ambassador to ward heeler and hatchet man has been seamless — and seamy.

After Bill’s success trolling the casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, Hillary handed off South Carolina and flew to California and other Super Tuesday states.

The Big Dog relished playing the candidate again, wearing a Technicolor orange tie and sweeping across the state with the mute Chelsea.

He tried to convey the impression that they were running against The Man, and with classic Clintonian self-pity, grumbled that Barack Obama had all the advantages.

When he was asked yesterday if he would feel bad standing in the way of the first black president, he said no. “I’m not standing in his way,” he said. “I think Hillary would be a better president” who’s “ready to do the job on the first day.”

He added: “No one has a right to be president, including Hillary. Keep in mind, in the last two primaries, we ran as an underdog.” He rewrote the facts, saying that “no one thought she could win” in New Hampshire, even though she originally had had a substantial lead.

He said of Obama: “I hope I get a chance to vote for him some day.” And that day, of course, would be after Hillary’s eight years; it’s her turn now because Bill owes her.

“I think it would be just as much a change, and some people think more, to have the first woman president as to have the first African-American president,” he said.

Bad Bill had been roughing up Obama so much that Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina suggested that he might want to “chill.”

On a conference call with reporters yesterday, the former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a national co-chairman of the Obama campaign, tut-tutted that the “incredible distortions” of the political beast were “not keeping with the image of a former president.”

Jonathan Alter reported in Newsweek that Senator Edward Kennedy and Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois congressman and former Clinton aide, have heatedly told Bill “that he needs to change his tone and stop attacking Senator Barack Obama.”

In the Myrtle Beach debate Monday night, Obama was fed up with being double-teamed by the Clintons. He finally used attack lines that his strategists had urged him to use against Hillary for months. “It was as though all the e-mails were backed up,” said one.

When Hillary tried once more to take Obama’s remarks about Ronald Reagan out of context, making it seem as though Obama had praised Reagan’s policies, he turned sarcastic about getting two distortionists for the price of one.

“I can’t tell who I’m running against sometimes,” he snapped at Hillary, obviously entrapped and pysched-out by the Clinton duo.

On a conference call with reporters yesterday morning, Obama did not back off from his more aggressive, if defensive, stance.

The Clintons, he said “spent the last month attacking me in ways that are not accurate. At some point, it’s important for me to answer.”

Recalling that Hillary had called mixing it up the “fun” part of politics, he said: “I don’t think it’s the fun part to fudge the truth.”

Bill has merged with his wife totally now, talking about “we” and “us.” “I never did anything major without discussing it with her,” he told a crowd here.

“We’ve been having this conversation since we first met in 1971, and I don’t think we’ll stop now.” He suggested as First Lad that “I can help to sell the domestic program.”

It’s odd that the first woman with a shot at becoming president is so openly dependent on her husband to drag her over the finish line. She handed over South Carolina to him, knowing that her support here is largely derivative.

At the Greenville event, Bill brought up Obama’s joking reference to him in the debate, about how Obama would have to see whether Bill was a good dancer before deciding whether he was the first black president.

Bill, naturally, turned it into a competition. “I would be willing to engage in a dancing competition with him, even though he’s much younger and thinner than I am,” he said. “If I’m going to get in one of these brother contests,” he added, “at least I should be entitled to an age allowance.”

He said, “I kind of like seeing Barack and Hillary fighting.”

“How great is this?” he said. “Neither of them has to be a little wind-up doll who’s supposed to behave in a certain way. They’re real people, flesh and blood people. They have differences.”

And if he has anything to say about it, and he will, they’ll be fighting till the last dog dies.