Bill Clinton

We got a good long look at the second-term edition of Barack Obama last week, and he's sounding more like Bill Clinton every day. It's not all that surprising. Over the last two years, Obama has turned repeatedly to Clinton for counsel. And Obama was a target of Clinton's advice even before he asked for it. In a 2011 book and a series of public appearances, the former president laid out a polite but biting critique of Obama's first-term stumbles. Warning No. 1, coming from the man who proclaimed (in his 1996 State of the Union message)

LANSDOWNE, Va. -- Former President Bill Clinton urged Congressional Democrats to pursue a positive agenda if they intend to reclaim the majority in the House and said they should not shy from gun control in the process, advising it need not be a "toxic land mine," if done correctly. Addressing the party as Democrats closed a three-day issues conference, Clinton warned that Republicans will pose a more formidable challenge in the midterms than they did last November, and that Democrats should reach beyond their political comfort zone if they hope to add seats again in two years.

An unpredictable Hollywood awards season took a few more sharp curves at the Golden Globes: Jodie Foster gave a dramatic and at times cryptic speech, former President Clinton put in a surprise appearance, and all that on-stage drama upstaged the movies in contention, which split the top awards. "Les Misérables," Tom Hooper's adaptation of the long-running stage musical set in 19th century France, was Sunday night's top honoree by the numbers, winning three trophies. In the comedy or musical categories, "Les Misérables" collected best picture and actor for Hugh Jackman as ex-con Jean Valjean, while Anne Hathaway won supporting actress for her performance as the consumptive prostitute Fantine.

Jodie Foster's speech had the Golden Globes ballroom in such a tizzy Sunday night that the crowd seemed to almost quickly forget the other surprise moment of the evening: when former President Bill Clinton came onstage. As he began to speak about the difficult process of passing a piece of legislation, it became clear he was there to take the idea of awards campaigning to the next level. A onetime U.S. president was there to actively stump for "Lincoln. "  Before the clip package shown for each of the drama nominees during the night, Clinton introduced "Steven Spielberg's extraordinary 'Lincoln.'" Clinton may have been speaking at the Globes, but he was perhaps hoping to be heard by Oscar voters, who will soon be casting their votes for Academy Awards.

Martin Scorsese has found his next film subject: Bill Clinton. The Oscar winner will produce and direct a documentary on the former president for HBO, the network announced Monday. The documentary will explore the 42nd president's perspective on history, politics and the like during his time in office and the years since - with Clinton offering his full cooperation. Scorsese's previous collaborations with HBO include "Public Speaking" and most recently, "George Harrison: Living in the Material World," which won an Emmy.

Martin Scorsese has found his next film subject: Bill Clinton. The Oscar winner will produce and direct a documentary on the former president for HBO, the network announced Monday. The documentary will explore the 42nd president's perspective on history, politics and the like during his time in office and the years since -- with Clinton offering his full cooperation. “President Clinton is one of the most compelling figures of our time, whose world view and perspective, combined with his uncommon intelligence, make him a singular voice on the world stage.

Shortly after the 1988 presidential election, pollsters asked Democrats whom they favored to be their party's nominee in 1992. The strongest candidates were Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Gov. Mario M. Cuomo of New York. The governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, didn't even register. Eight years ago, after another election, the pollsters tried again. The front-runners for the 2008 Democratic nomination, they found, were Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and John F. Kerry. The newly elected senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, wasn't on the list.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, long the most famous overachiever in the U.S. Army, is already on his way to a new career distinction: breaking the land speed record for rehabilitation from a scandal. It was only two weeks ago that Petraeus resigned from his job as director of the CIA after it became clear that his affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, couldn't be kept under wraps. The dust hasn't settled yet on the chaos kicked up by the FBI's discovery of the affair, touched off by Broadwell's jealousy of another woman who liked men in uniform.

Second terms have rarely been kind to American presidents. Our last two-term leader, George W. Bush, ended his tenure with a financial crash so disastrous that his own party has tried to erase him from memory. Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton, was more successful, but he still spent much of his second term enmeshed in a sex scandal and battling impeachment. Even our greatest modern presidents had rocky second terms: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan are all revered more for what they accomplished in their first four years than for their later acts.

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio -- President Obama is aligning himself with President Clinton so fully these days that it sometimes looks like he's running for his predecessor's third term. At the heart of Obama's case for reelection is the argument that Democratic economic philosophy works for the middle class, as anyone can see by looking back to the eight-year period when America had a president "who shared our beliefs. " “His name was Bill Clinton,” Obama says in his current stump speech, now playing all over Ohio.