Clinton brings credibility to linking Obama with a strong economy. | Brett Flashnick/POLITICO Obama's Clinton crutch

The presidential race appears to be moving in President Barack Obama’s favor, but he’s still relying on the Bill Clinton crutch.

Clinton heads to New Hampshire next Wednesday to provide the overture for Obama in the hours before the first debate, and more stops are in the works.


The message couldn’t be clearer: There may be a way for Chicago to pull off a win without Clinton’s continued help, but they’re not going to risk it.

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The Obama campaign used Clinton to buoy the Democratic convention, then had him star in the president’s post-convention ad buy — and not just because the former president remains immensely popular. As the campaign acknowledges, Clinton brings credibility to the connection between an Obama presidency and a strong economy, reinforcing the idea that there’s a straight line between Obama’s proposals and Clinton’s legacy of budget surpluses and middle class prosperity.

“I can’t recall a time when someone who’s not on the ballot has been this important,” said Paul Begala, the former Clinton strategist and current adviser to the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action.

First lady Michelle Obama’s approval ratings rival Clinton’s, but there’s no mistaking that Clinton is Obama’s most important surrogate, the one that he’s leaning on. For all the questions swirling about Mitt Romney’s personal appeal and the circular firing squad of Republicans raising doubts about his economic argument, Obama remains vulnerable on the economy and lacks Clinton’s natural ability to connect with people, despite the president’s high likability ratings.

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Clinton — whose popularity has moved up steadily almost every year since the end of his scandal-ridden presidency — is a uniquely effective messenger.

“There’s a testimony that Clinton and only Clinton can give, which is: ‘I know how to build an economy that works, and this president is doing the right things,’” Begala said. “It allows the debate to be eight years of Democratic economics, which is exactly the stuff that President Obama is trying to enact, versus eight years of Republican economics, which is exactly the stuff that Romney wants to go back to.”

And the Obama campaign isn’t pretending otherwise. The Obama ad that featured a laid back Clinton chatting about helping the middle class — building up to “that’s what happened when I was president” — has already aired almost 16,000 times in its first month on the air, making it the most-run spot of the campaign, Bloomberg News reported Thursday.

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The Obama campaign has been eager to use Clinton on additional stops after his post-convention swing through Florida, and the planning is underway for where those will be for after the New Hampshire trip next week. Clinton put his name on the latest reelection fundraising email. He‘ll be on the trail with Obama and is being used to promote the next small-donation raffle prize.

“Not only will we fly you and a guest out to sunny California, but you’ll meet two great American presidents,” reads the email appeal from Deputy Campaign Manager Julianna Smoot.

Obama is seen by some voters as a symbol of battered hope, undelivered change and an unemployment rate that’s stuck around 8 percent. Clinton’s got a golden-age gloss that has people remembering his presidency as a time of prosperity and fiscal discipline.

“He’s not in the daily political fray,” former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers said. “He can frame the Democratic argument and claim all the benefits without having to account for things people don’t like.”

Begala invited Mitt Romney to bring his own available former president on the campaign trail, and even offered to pay for George W. Bush’s plane ticket to Ohio. That’s the point, he said: Clinton enables the Obama campaign to make an empirical argument for the president’s reelection.

Obama could be making that case on his own, Begala said, “but why would you? Would we have won the Second World War without the atomic bomb? Sure, but it sure helps having one, and the other side didn’t.”

“He’s the most requested surrogate,” Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said. “He’s the most effective politician out there.”

But Obama campaign spokesman Adam Fetcher said Clinton’s presence is less about popularity and politics than about credibility.

“As a former president who faced similar economic and political challenges and pursued a similar path as President Obama, President Clinton is uniquely able to make the case for why the president’s vision to keep the country moving forward by building an economy from the middle class out will work, and why Mitt Romney’s plan to return to the same failed, top-down policies of the past simply will not,” Fetcher said.

The result is yet another highly politically charged chapter in a Clinton post-presidency that’s already been distinctly political. But Myers said the Democrats are just doing what makes sense.

“If President Reagan were around, God rest his soul, Republicans would be using him in the same way,” she said.

And, Brazile added, the Obama campaign’s repeated requests to Clinton help energize him about getting out there more.

“There’s nothing like President Clinton when he is game on,” Brazile said. “If the campaign is engaging him, the more he’s going to get out there to work.”

Byron Tau contributed to this report.