THE former president Bill Clinton is to ride to Barack Obama’s rescue in the coming weeks by holding joint events with the Democratic presidential candidate.

The Obama team hopes the “Bubba factor” - Clinton’s appeal to white, working-class voters - will revitalise its campaign and staunch defections to Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee.

A source close to the Obama campaign said: “Bill Clinton is on board. He’s making all the right moves and he and Barack Obama are going to campaign together.”

The former president met Obama over lunch at his New York office last Thursday on the seventh anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Clinton predicted that “Senator Obama will win and win handily” and offered to do “whatever I’m asked to help out”.

Obama needs the populist touch that Clinton can provide, senior Democrats believe. “People are tapping into Sarah Palin in the same way that they did to Bill Clinton,” an Obama official said.

A public display of unity could rally Democrats and bring some buzz back to Obama in the same way that big-name endorsements from Senator Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, the 2004 candidate, helped to relaunch Obama after he lost key primaries to Hillary Clinton.

Bill Clinton’s first campaign stop will be in Florida on September 29.

Matt McKenna, Clinton’s spokesman, said no decision had been taken yet about whether or where he would appear with Obama. “It is first to be decided and then to be announced,” he said.

Larry Sabato, professor of politics at the University of Virginia, said: “Maybe Bill Clinton can become Barack Obama’s Sarah Palin. He certainly needs some new energy and excitement for his campaign.”

During the long-running primary campaign with Hillary Clinton, the two camps were openly at war. Bill Clinton accused the Obama team of conducting a “hit job” against him.

Much of the ill-will dissipated when Clinton declared at the Democratic convention in Denver that “Barack Obama is ready to be president of the United States”. It was an important gesture after Hillary Clinton’s advertisement implicitly questioning his fitness to take a 3am emergency call at the White House.

In turn, Obama has taken to praising Clinton’s record in office at campaign stops. “When Bill Clinton was president, the average family income went up $7,500,” he said at a rally in Virginia. “If Clinton is sincere and he’s going to act with Obama ina full-throated way, he can have an impact,” Sabato said.

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