Bill Clinton Gives McCain Campaign Great Anti-Obama Campaign Ad Quote

Former President Bill Clinton — a politician who is no dummy and knows the impact his words will have — is proving to be the gift that keeps on giving…for the McCain campaign.

How much do you want to bet part of this quote will be used in video or quotation in a last minute-McCain campaign ad?

Barack Obama cultivated the image of a cool and collected leader during the height of the economic crisis last month, when lawmakers on Capitol Hill scrambled to draft a workable bailout package after a meltdown on Wall Street.

And when John McCain suspended his campaign to dive head first into the fray, Obama’s campaign accused the Republican of being “unsteady.”

But to hear Bill Clinton tell it, the Democratic nominee didn’t quite have a handle on the situation himself.

“I haven’t cleared this with him and he may even be mad at me for saying this so close to the election, but I know what else he said to his economic advisers (during the crisis),” Clinton told the crowd at a Wednesday night rally with Obama in Florida. “He said, ‘Tell me what the right thing to do is. What’s the right thing for America? Don’t tell me what’s popular. You tell me what’s right — I’ll figure out how to sell it.’”

Clinton said when the crisis broke, Obama called his own advisers as well as those of the former two-term president, Hillary Clinton, Warren Buffet and others.

“He called those people. You know why? Because he knew it was complicated and before he said anything he wanted to understand,” Clinton said. “That’s what a president does in a crisis.”

You can bet that as you read this McCain campaign advisors are getting ready to use the most negative parts (the first paragraph in boldface).

And McCain’s campaign has responded ASAP (if they didn’t they probably could be sued for political negligence):

“Barack Obama had no idea what the right thing to do is or at least that’s Bill Clinton’s impression,” McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb said.

“It’s disturbing that … Barack Obama’s response to this is ‘Tell me what to do and I will sell it,’” Goldfarb added. “That’s been Barack Obama’s entire campaign — is one big sales job.”

Given early voting and the distaste many Americans clearly now show for President George Bush, this quote will likely not have the same kind of impact it would have had at the height of the Wall Street meltdown when McCain suspended his campaign.

But Clinton’s words will be used against Obama and if there’s video of it, some selective editing could make for a campaign ad that would get lots of buzz the second it’s released.

And Clinton? We’ve done many posts here about how he has seemingly evolved into someone with either a seriously out of control ego, or whether time and his heart operations have somehow dulled his one razor-sharp political instincts. He was once considered the most masterful and talented politician of his generation. Either his skills have dimmed or he wanted to hurl a dagger coated with sugar at Obama.

Shall we take bets on how long it will be before a McCain ad quoting Bill Clinton appears?