Barack Obama and Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton is proving to be a valuable source of endorsement sound bytes for the Mitt Romney campaign.

As President Clinton does his obligatory stumping for Obama, stark differences between his free market beliefs and president Obama's anti business record erupt and cause friction between the two.

The Obama campaign had recently tried to demonize private equity firm Bain Capital, where Mitt Romney served as CEO,  as a "vulture capital" firm, only interested in finding distressed companies and stripping them of assets to line their own pockets. As the narrative was supposed to go, Bain was an evil capitalistic firm that loved to lay off employees in order to squeeze out every last penny of profit.  Favorite time of lay offs of course was right before Christmas,  so bonuses didn't have to be paid and end of year tax write offs could be maximized.

Of course that was how the Axelrod/Obama/Plouff script was supposed to be read by the "team players"  Evidently the script didn't get passed around to all the team mates and many high profile Democrats, didn't spin the Bain story that way.  In fact many of them defended Bain Capital and the whole system of capitalism as being a fundamental good force in our economic system.


Other high profile Democrats defended Bain

One such player was hugely popular Democrat Mayor of Newark New Jersey, Corey Booker.  In a high profile display he singled out Bain Capital as a good company which didn't deserve the criticism heaped upon it.  But he soon tempered that statement after being taken to task by the White house team and did an awkward sort of meandering apology after the fact.

Influential Democrat strategist Lanny Davis, condemned the negativity being directed toward Bain Capital & Mitt Romney by the Obama political team...and didn't back down from his statement.

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But heavy hitter Bill Clinton stepped into the Bain Capital arena:  “I don’t think we ought to get in the position to say ‘this is bad work,'" said the former president referring to the Obama campaign’s characterizations of Mitt Romney’s work at private equity firm Bain Capital.

Clinton even went as far as suggesting that likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is qualified to be President of the United States:

“There’s no question that, in terms of getting up and going to the office, basically performing the essential functions of the office, a man who was governor and had a sterling business career, crosses the qualification threshold,” the former president said of Romney....Bain is a good company and should not be criticized."

Of course that recent Bill Clinton semi endorsements of Mitt Romney to be President were met with a visit to the same woodshed that Corey Booker was taken to when he defended Romney's Bain Capital and Clinton came back and tempered his comments.

But Bill Clinton is a smart wily politician and does not make many gaffes...mistakenly.  This has lead to some speculation that perhaps Bill Clinton, the politician,  is looking to do some payback to the Obama campaign for some of dirty laundry launched his way during the Democrat primary where he was campaigning for his wife Hillary.  Many insiders say Bill Clinton is still steaming for underhanded tactics thrown towards the Clinton's by the Obama team. He was supposedly outraged to have the race card thrown at him.

Is Bill Clinton secretly helping Hillary to get the 2016 nomination?

To further this speculation along, a new book out called "The Amateur", by highly respected journalist Ed Klein, suggests that Bill Clinton has a low opinion of President Obama and refers to him as an amateur.

In the book, Bill Clinton, was supposed to have been urging Hillary to run against Obama in the 2011 primaries, thinking she would be a better President than Obama has proven to be.

President Clinton showed during his Presidency he had the ability to work across the aisle in order to get major legislation passed and even get a balanced budget.  This is a far cry from what has been happening in Washington DC for the past 3 1/2 years under President Obama, who seems to not be able to bend his ideology and work with others across the aisle.

Of course there is much speculation that Hillary will run for President in 2016.  Who but Bill would be a better campaigner to see this goal accomplished?   Perhaps he is laying the groundwork now by drawing a stark line between the Clinton attitude of pragmatism and Obama's unbending ideology.

In any case I think the Romney campaign will welcome the help,  as Bill Clinton continues to stump for President Obama.


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