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In sports, great athletes retire. Then they come back. Blame the saturated media coverage that turns fading stars into journalistic supernovas. Blame escalated pay scales that often leave a player collecting far more than he’s worth in the final seasons of his career. Blame the pure human instinct for one last delicious ego boost before setting off for the relative anonymity of private life. But most of them come back. They can’t resist it.

Politicians are the same way, sometimes.

In sports, the end result is a trade-off, but not in the athlete’s favour. The athlete gets a little more attention and money, but loses a significant amount of shine from the lustre of his glory days. In sports, things tend to shine brighter the further we get away from them. (This is, in part, why Ty Cobb and Gaylord Perry are hall-of-famers and Barry Bonds is a cheating dipshit). In politics … well, Bill Clinton better hope the same doesn’t hold true.

• ‘Mr Clinton, 61, reveals that his wife has said she would ask him to “go out and immediately restore America’s standing, go out and tell people America was open for business and cooperation again” after eight years marked by unilateralist policies that have “enrage[d] the world”.’

That’s a tough job. Bill is doing wonderful nonpartisan charity work with Nelson Mandela at the moment and encouraging us all to give time and money to good causes. Why would he go and jump back in the geopolitical fray like this? Because he owes Hillary? Maybe, but … maybe he just can’t stay away.

Right now — without looking at Hillary’s campaign — Bill has it made. He was a decent president, very likable and certainly competent. He did some things well, others … not so much. But it did it with such a genial charm that everyone believed he always had their best interests at heart. His legacy — at least right now — has the not insignificant bonus of having been sandwiched in between two Bushes, meaning that to about half of the American people, he will sparkle like the lone political gem in an era of dull rocks.

He’s been able to bask in it, lo these past eight years, as the American people (a majority of them anyway) grew sick of the current administration’s image of callous disregard for world opinion. ‘Wasn’t it nice,’ all those Democrats, and even some Republicans, recalled, “when that sympathetic, smiling charmer was around, and everybody liked us and thought we really cared.”

Of course, not everybody liked them, even then. And if you looked around there was ample evidence that the sympathetic guy didn’t care all that much about everybody.

Just like there was always evidence that Joe DiMiaggio was a wife-beater and Mickey Mantle was the sort of alcoholic that would make little kids cry. Michael Jordan was kind of a selfish, glory-hog, it just didn’t register until there wasn’t enough glory to go around. It doesn’t matter when you look at it from far away. They were excellent at their jobs, things were wonderful when they were around, and they were better than the guys who came after them, so how can they have had those sort of flaws?

The same as true of Clinton, at least comparatively. But now he’s anticipating that he can be Hillary’s cleanup man and everything will be fine and dandy…

What happens though, if the world that Bush has ‘enraged’ needs more than a smile and a handshake and a promise that this kind ol’ southern gent is listening to their concerns once more?

Will Bill get a free pass because, hey — he was a good president and it’s Hillary’s office now, so she should shoulder the blame?

Is this about campaign strategy — will the promise of the return of Slick Willy help lure a few potential Obama voters back to the Clinton stable, trusting that Bill will be playing a major role?

Or is this just Billy Clinton, the old college athlete, inserting himself into the discussion to remind that he was great once upon a time and in those days the West was prosperous? Is it a surreptitious elbow prod intended to warn young Barack that nobody does folksy-caring quite the way Billy can?

Will Bill’s trip back to Washington be remembered the same way as Michael Jordan’s last grasp at the ring; going into the capital ostensibly to play a supporting role, only to assert himself as the alpha dog because his ego demands it?

You don’t want that sort of under-the-table power struggle on an NBA bench. It killed the Washington Wizards when Jordan did it. If Bill goes back in and tries to make nice with the foreigners again, it could end with the United States regaining some stature, and the Clintons, together and triumphant, fixing the mess that’s been left for them.

But comebacks don’t always work that way, and unlike Michael Jordan in Washington, Bill can’t just fire his coach, trade away his players and take over the show himself. If it doesn’t work, he’ll have to slink away and go back to his speaking engagements and charity work, somebody else will have to try to calm down the ‘enraged’ world and we’ll all remember that, while Bill was a heck of a good guy, he wasn’t the superman that shone in the rear-view mirror.