And that's not even touching all the protectionism (Obama: NAFTA was a mistake) on offer.

This is another Dan, not Drezner.

Yes, the last two Democratic Presidents have both crossed lines established by long precedent.

Could you even imagine Herbert Hoover trash-talking FDR? Or Harry Truman publicly bashing Eisenhower or JFK? But Jimmy Carter injects himself into foreign relations, shows sympathy for anti-American sentiments, and hysterical criticisms of Reagan, both Bushes, and occasionally Clinton. The worst ex-President in history.

Bill Clinton is all about Bill, and to actually meddle in the Democratic primaries in this fashion is incredibly unworthy of a past President. GHW Bush never made negative comments as I recall, only positive comments about his son. I would have reacted very strongly to any bashing of the competition had it occurred in 2000, so it must not have happened.

Bill Clinton makes up his own rules, but his actions are terribly destructive to his party and to the precedent of ex-Presidential dignity, or lack thereof.

"Could you even imagine Herbert Hoover trash-talking FDR? Or Harry Truman publicly bashing Eisenhower or JFK?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJeFlB1Q8EA

"GHW Bush never made negative comments as I recall, only positive comments about his son."

You realize that they are related, right? That GHWB is the father of GWB, right? "Father doesn't trash the son that has been groomed for political aspirations" seems like a paradigm of surprising goodness? Did you really mean to make that statement as some sort of argument for your side?

Also, Aaron has shown you that this sort of political drama isn't new to the world of American politics....

Which line? There's one set of norms for ex-Presidents, another set of norms for candidate's spouses. Elizabeth Edwards raised some eyebrows early on when she was John's advocate. The Republican wives are all proper, being seen and not heard, or at least not saying anything controversial.

Maybe Bill is setting new norms. Or maybe he's proving that Al Gore was right in not asking him to campaign until late.

As I recall it, Bush the father said something like (it may even be the exact quote) "give the boy a chance" about our current President when he was running in 2000. Not exactly the endorsement a campaign wants the public to hear, and I think that Herbert Walker was put out to pasture and told to shut up for the rest of the campaign.

I like Eisenhower's response best. When asked what Nixon had done as Vice Preseident, he [is supposed to have] said "Give me a week and I'll think of something"

yagij, I will gladly violate my own standards of debate and discussion by raising the question as follows: Are you not a native English speaker, or did you intentionally misread DanD's comment?

DanD can correct me if I'm wrong, but most normal people read his comment as referring to GHW Bush not making negative comments about his son's opponents. Wasn't Prof Drezner's point about Bill Clinton taking on Hillary's opponents in a negative fashion?

Yes, Harry Truman was publicly angry about how his home-state candidate was treated at the Convention. Bill Clinton is speaking in a bitterly negative tone about Hillary's opponent EIGHT MONTHS before the convention. Difference in degree, difference in scope and scale.

I don't really think we can expect Me Generation Presidents to acknowledge any discretion that it might once have been thought proper for former Presidents to exercise.

The rules are different for them and, frankly, the public appears fine with that. I expect Bill Clinton's zealous efforts to secure the Presidency for his wife to be closely coordinated with her campaign, and four years from now I expect George Bush to be leading the effort to raise money for his brother. This kind of thing will stop when candidates benefiting from it pay a price -- or, to be more specific, when the American people decide that Bushes and Clintons as far as the eye can see are giving to American politics an unflattering resemblance to the politics of backward South Asian republics. There's no sign of that happening yet.

big differences:
Bill Clinton is popular. Especially in a Democratic primary. H.W. Bush was associated with patrician indifference to the sufferings of average people which is exactly the image that W. was trying to avoid, so they kept him out of the campaign. Even in the primary W. was running as the tax-cutting true conservative, again an image not helped by bringing H. W. Bush into the campaign (Read My Lips!). I'll bet (if they can control him at all) Bill won't be quite the same in the general election as independents will wonder what sort of influence he might have on a new president.

Hoover and Truman were actively involved in electoral politics and intra-party scrums. Hoover was the defacto head of the Republican party for a good decade or more after he lost to FDR. Going back further, Teddy Roosevelt was so involved in politics that he ran again, splitting the ticket and giving Wilson the presidency.

I think the "above the fray" meme began because of Nixon and Carter, as no one in their parties wanted their help. Bush carried it on a bit. But as recently as 1980, Gerald Ford, an ex-president, was considered for the vice-presidency, which certainly doesn't suggest a longstanding tradition of ex-presidents staying out of politics.

It depends on your expectations for the conduct of ex-Presidents. As someone wrote above, the expectations have come down considerably because of Carter.