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California's Embattled Governor Gains a New Adviser: Bill Clinton (ADAM NAGOURNEY, 8/13/03, NY Times)

Mr. Clinton, who himself survived a recall effort of sorts, has over the past week become one of Mr. Davis's main strategic advisers, associates of the two men say.

Mr. Clinton met privately with Mr. Davis and his wife, Sharon, at an A.F.L.-C.I.O. convention in Chicago last week, offering a political tutorial on how Mr. Davis should beat back the effort to remove him. (Points 1, 2, and 3: act gubernatorial, make sure the fight is about the recall initiative and not about Mr. Davis, and do not get baited by the news media into a fight with Arnold Schwarzenegger, one participant said.)

How does Bill Clinton maintain his reputation as a political genius? Mr. Davis has no control over these aspects of the race anymore and the last two even contradict each other. What Mr. Davis has to do to win--assuming that's possible--is to demonstrate that neither Arnold Schwarzenegger not Cruz Bustamante is fit for the job. He should challenge the two of them to a series of debates, as many as they'll agree to, which might well be none given their respective weaknesses.

That is the setting in which Mr. Davis could appear, if not gubernatorial, at least a heavyweight. Mr. Bustamante is a notorious lightweight and Mr. Schwarzenegger would be easy enough to ambush by asking him questions about state issues he's unlikely to be familiar with and by asking him about divisive social issues so as to separate him from his Republican base. Moreover, this strategy suits Mr. Davis's temperament--he got where he is by attacking viciously, not by running from the Rose Garden (or the CA equivalent). Come out swinging, cast yourself as an embattled Harry Truman type, and take no prisoners--there's nothing left to lose. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 13, 2003 7:54 AM