Barack Obama looks to Bill Clinton for answers

President Barack Obama is seeking inspiration from Bill Clinton, the last Democratic incumbent of the White House, in an effort to fight back from the lowest point of his year-old administration.

Despite their bitter fall-out during the bitter primary campaign with his wife Hillary Clinton, Mr Obama is this weekend looking at how Mr Clinton put his presidency back on track after the Democrats suffered disastrous mid-term congressional results in 1994, two years after he came to power.

Mr Obama will try to recapture the spark of his campaign with his first State of the Union address on Wednesday night when he will hammer home plans for a second jobs stimulus package and the drastic overhaul of Wall Street which he announced last week.

Many Obama operatives are scornful of Mr Clinton's tendency for small-bore tinkering and his embrace of populist centrist initiatives during most of his time in office. But they are nonetheless well aware that his change of strategy, after his own attempt at health care reform led by then first lady Hillary became fatally bogged down, completely resurrected his faltering presidency. "The President needs to focus relentlessly on the economy and assure Americans that he really understands what they're going through," Dan Gerstein, a senior Democratic strategist and former advisor to one-time vice-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, told The Sunday Telegraph.