"Kerry is too far away from him," said Scott Reed, the campaign manager in 1996 for Bob Dole, Clinton's GOP opponent. "I don't think Kerry wears any of the negative Clinton baggage."
Republicans are somewhat more optimistic that the renewed attention to Clinton's impeachment could remind some voters about qualities they liked in President Bush, particularly his frequent promise in 2000 to restore integrity and honesty to the Oval Office.
Yet Clinton partisans insist they are eager for such a discussion, noting that Bush's ratings for honesty and integrity have slipped significantly in recent months amid fierce debate over whether he exaggerated the evidence over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein's links to Al Qaeda.
John Podesta, a former Clinton chief of staff, says he thinks that after an initial focus on Lewinsky, the former president will have more opportunity in later interviews to highlight his policy record -- and to create an implicit contrast with Bush on issues such as the federal deficit, job creation and the reduction of poverty.
"Kerry's economic and domestic policies are well lined up with Clinton's philosophy. So that just by going out and talking about what he was trying to accomplish, Clinton reminds people there is a different way from the way Bush has proceeded, and it produced better results," said Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank.
But just as Democrats say they are ready to compare Clinton's integrity with Bush's, Republicans say they are prepared to debate Clinton's policy legacy.
One conservative group aired ads last weekend criticizing the former president's record on fighting terrorism. And the Bush campaign Tuesday released a study arguing that on a lengthy list of indicators -- such as unemployment and job growth in the election year -- the economy today is at least as strong as it was at this point in 1996, when Clinton won reelection.
"John Kerry should not be allowed in the middle of a presidential campaign to rhetorically criticize the Bush economy as the worst since the Great Depression, and then reminisce about the glory of the Clinton economy when the numbers and the economic indicators are substantively the same," said Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush reelection campaign.
All of these competing arguments should provide plenty of tinder for talk radio and cable television over the next month. But, "Will all this be mostly forgotten by October?" said Democratic pollster Paul Maslin. "Sure."
Times staff reporter Michael Finnegan contributed to this report.
