It was just a year or so ago when the Gallup Organization reported that Americans regarded Clinton as the fourth greatest president ever (behind Abe Lincoln, Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy and ahead of FDR.)

So why does the fellow with the fabled political instincts keep pulling dunderhead moves on the trail?

Yesterday, as you may have heard, Bill Clinton began riffing in Indiana about how badly his spouse was treated in the dust-up over her mis-statement about coming under fire while landing in Bosnia in ’95.

Referring to reporters’ handling of Hillary’s mistaken recollection, Bill said: “You woulda thought, you know, that she’d robbed a bank the way they carried on about this. And some of them, when they’re 60, they’ll forget something when they’re tired at 11:00 at night, too.”

And he kept at it. At another stop, he accused the press of treating his wife like the WW I spy. “Did you see all of that?” he asked. “They acted like she was practically Mata Hari, like she was making up all this stuff.”

The problem here is that the story about Sen. Clinton’s exaggeration had had long since died down. So the effect of the ex-president’s defense of his wife was to revive it for another news cycle or two.

Campaigning in Terre Haute today, Bill Clinton said his phone rang last night and it was HIllary telling him to let the issue rest.

“Hillary called me and said, ‘You don’t remember this. You weren’t there, let me handle it’. I said, ‘Yes ma’am,” Clinton said.

We’d love to know how that conversation really went.

More than a few Democrats might love to know whether the Bill Clinton brand has been tarnished by his campaign flubs considering that he and his talents will be sorely needed this fall no matter who their nominee turns out to be.