The Sly Fox

Brian Beutler has a provocative theory:

What if Bill Clinton’s apparent hostility to Barack Obama in recent weeks and months has actually been a ploy to draw greater-than-normal attention to his fall campaign events, so that when he doesn’t say crazy things–when he instead plays the part of persuasive surrogate–the media’s all over the story.

This seems almost possible. Certainly, Clinton’s campaign appearance speaking on behalf of Obama at a rally seemed to attract a lot more coverage than the news (“prominent Democrat supports Democratic nominee”) strictly seemed to merit. But by turning his views of Obama into a big inside-baseball DC story, Clinton — whether intentionally or not — has transformed his speeches on Obama’s behalf into noteworthy news occurrences. Clinton is also like two or three orders of magnitude better than anyone else in politics at explaining to the public why it is that the financial rescue package serves the interests of ordinary citizen.