Bill Clinton questions Obama's experience

It was only a matter of time before this happened: Bill Clinton has joined his wife and begun spinning the Barack Obama-lacks-experience narrative. The former president, in an interview with Bloomberg Television set to air this weekend, says that he was far more experienced as a 46-year-old in 1992 when he first won the White House. Obama is 46 now.

"There is a difference," Clinton says, according to Bloomberg. "I was the senior governor in America. I had been head of any number of national organizations that were related to the major issue of the day, which is how to restore America's economic strength.''

In the Bloomberg interview, Clinton compares Obama's level of experience today to his own in 1988, when he chose not to run for president. "I came within a day of announcing, because most of the governors were for me and I had been a governor for six years,'' he says. "And I really didn't think I knew enough and had served enough and done enough to run."

Bill Clinton has so far largely avoided being critical of his wife's opponents, saying that the candidates are good enough that voters didn't have to be "against" any of them. Does this signal a shift?

Obama spokesman Bill Burton responded by telling Bloomberg News that Obama has more than 20 years of "the experience America needs.'' "He can change the divisive politics of Washington because he's the one candidate who's spent his career bringing people of differing views together,'' Burton is quoted as saying.