Illustration by Kevin Kallaugher

THE Democrats are in the midst of making an historic choice between nominating their first female presidential candidate or their first black presidential candidate. And who is everybody talking about? A certain 61-year-old white male with a habit of waffling on about the old days, falling asleep in public and turning puce when crossed.

For most ex-presidents retirement is a golden time. They top up their personal fortunes, polish their reputations, perform good works and indulge in their hobbies (skydiving, in the case of George Bush senior). Richard Nixon turned himself into a foreign-policy sage. Jimmy Carter builds houses for the poor. Ronald Reagan wrote movingly about Alzheimer's before the disease silenced him.

For years Bill Clinton trod the same path. The Clinton Global Initiative is widely regarded as a model of its kind. Mr Clinton teamed up with Mr Bush senior to raise money for the victims of the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. The mere mention of his name was enough to put the devotees of Davos and other such gatherings into a swoon.

But over the past few months Mr Clinton has downgraded himself from global statesman to political hatchet-man. No former president has inserted himself so wholeheartedly into a presidential race. (Mr Bush senior stayed in the background of his son's campaign, and declined to get stuck in even after John McCain won in New Hampshire.) Mr Clinton has not only dismissed Barack Obama as a roll of the dice and a purveyor of fairy tales. He has also ripped into awkward reporters and wandered into the Nevada caucuses to canvass for his wife. He is spending more time campaigning in South Carolina than the candidate herself. Mr Clinton seems intent on playing Spiro Agnew to his wife's Nixon, but with one important difference: Agnew went after the other side.

Mr Clinton's behaviour has caused consternation in the upper ranks of his party. Jonathan Alter reports in Newsweek that two leading party figures who are neutral in the race, Ted Kennedy and Rahm Emanuel, have told Mr Clinton to change his tone. Several black leaders have publicly upbraided him.

Some of Mrs Clinton's confidants are also worried that their attack-dog has a touch of the mange. Mr Clinton's stump speeches tend to narcissism—particularly when he is reflecting on his glory years in the White House. He claims that he never supported the Iraq war, a statement that does not stand up to a couple of minutes' research on the internet. He fell asleep during a service in honour of Martin Luther King at a church in Harlem (“Bill has a dream”, quipped the New York Post).

Is Mr Clinton damaging his wife's presidential chances as well as his own reputation? This seems unlikely in the short-term battle against Mr Obama. The former president is armed with the biggest megaphone in the business. This could prove particularly important in the battle for mega-states such as California and New York, where advertising is prohibitively expensive and free press is manna from heaven. The Clintons' double-barrelled attack has put Mr Obama on the defensive—not a position that brings out the best in him. It has also succeeded in its chief aim: defining him as a black candidate, and an inexperienced one at that.

But the longer-term effect could be more harmful. The more Mrs Clinton relies on her husband, the more she undermines the most compelling arguments for her candidacy. Take the notion that she is a feminist pioneer. Mr Clinton's omnipresence not only reminds us that his wife made her political career by attaching herself to his coat-tails. Only a spouse could have survived the debacle of “Hillarycare”. It also reminds voters that her first instinct when the going gets tough is to turn to her husband.

Or take her claim that she stands for “smart change” or “real change” or whatever the latest slogan is. This was always going to be a difficult pose for Mrs Clinton to maintain. But her hip-and-thigh relationship with her husband underlines her two biggest weaknesses—her scandal-ridden past in the White House (remember Marc Rich? Or the free-loading Rodham brothers?) and the dynastification of American politics. When he retired from the presidency, Mr Clinton left the customary letter to his successor alongside the letter Mr Bush senior had left for him eight years before. Does the world's greatest democracy really want to give Mr Bush a chance to make a similar gesture?





Another rolling disaster?

The biggest damage is to Mrs Clinton's claim that she will be an effective chief executive. Mr Clinton's frenetic role in the campaign surely prefigures the role he will play in the White House, advising here, meddling there, and using the access to top-secret information that his position as an ex-president affords him to second-guess the most sensitive decisions. Who will hold Mr Clinton accountable for his actions? How will the White House function with an ex-president and a vice-president vying for influence? (One insider once termed the “three-headed” relationship between the Clintons and Al Gore a “rolling disaster”.) The Clintonians like to describe their bosses as complementary figures who act as “force multipliers”. But in the 1990s what actually got multiplied was confusion.

All this will be material for the Republican attack machine. By most reckonings the Republicans should be doomed. But the Clintons' tactics are alienating blacks and young people. The Clintons are in the process of doing the impossible: making the 2008 election a referendum on them, rather than on the Republicans. And the Republicans are inching towards nominating their one candidate, Mr McCain, who has broad popular appeal. If what ought to be a stroll in the park in November becomes a real fight, then the Democrats will know who to blame.