Bill Clinton: What It Will Be Like to Have Him Back on the Campaign Trail

— -- Former President Bill Clinton has been keeping quiet when it comes to directly commenting on his wife's latest bid for the White House -- but he's starting to make more obvious hints now that she is officially two weeks into the race.

"We're not big on quitting in my family. You may have noticed that," he said at a Tuesday event held at his alma mater, Georgetown University.

Moving past Hillary Clinton's return to the race for, what she described in her 2008 concession speech as "the highest, hardest glass ceiling," her bid also means that Bill Clinton will be returning to the campaign fray.

The former president brings some undeniable advantages with him, including his well-worn Rolodex of supporters and automatic public interest. But Hillary's staffers are likely already factoring how they can avoid some of the pitfalls he made during his wife's first White House bid.

"He brings the kinds of political and interpersonal skills that some think that she lacks so while he helps her in that way he also makes a contrast to her which is not as favorable," professor Stephen Wayne, the American Government field chair at Georgetown, told ABC News.

Bill Clinton's most obvious misstep during the 2008 campaign came in South Carolina, when he compared then-Sen. Obama's primary victory in the state to that of Rev. Jesse Jackson, prompting outcry from African-American voters. Clinton later said the Obama camp "played the race card on me" by having his remarks "twisted for political purposes."

"Everyone in politics is familiar with that one," Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, said of the South Carolina incident. "Clinton's animus to Obama wasn't even thinly disguised. It took Obama and Clinton a long time to patch things up."

Calling Obama's stance on the War in Iraq and his candidacy in general "the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen" definitely didn't help either.

"Hillary will once again be held responsible for anything Bill says in 2016," Sabato said. "With the good comes the bad."

Publicly, Bill claims that he isn't psyched for the spotlight, having told Town & Country in the magazine's latest cover story that he doesn't think he'll be good at campaigning this time around.

"I've told Hillary that I don't think I'm good [at campaigning] anymore because I'm not mad at anybody. I'm a grandfather, and I got to see my granddaughter last night, and I can't be mad," he told the magazine.

History indicates otherwise, however.

The clearest example that 42 won't shy away from the spotlight came during the last election, when he gave a passionate – and lengthy—speech on behalf of President Obama at the Democratic National Convention. His 48-minute prime-time speech ran well over the allotted time-frame.

Sabato says the former president's appearance on behalf of his Democratic successor marked "the true beginning of the reconciliation between Obama and his predecessor" and currying that kind of favor will give Clinton's camp a chip to bargain with.

Even though the similarity to the start of this campaign and the last, when Hillary Clinton was also seen by some as the Democratic front-runner like she very much is now, there are some physical differences that the past eight years have had on her running-mate, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

"Physically he's gotten much older and much thinner… and seemingly a little less active than he was in the past," Wayne said. "Secondly he has learned to stay a little bit in the background -- certainly he did while she was Secretary of State -- so I think he's reached the top and now he has become and looks like an elder statesman."