Bill Clinton and Barack Obama Photo: AP

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.

Panic stations were sounded for his party, which controls the White House and both chambers of Congress, after a groundswell of public discontent and economic anxiety swept a little-known Republican candidate to a Senate victory last week in the traditional Democratic stronghold of Massachusetts in a seat long held by Ted Kennedy, the “liberal lion”.

Unless the Democrats led by Mr Obama can win back the independent voters who have deserted in droves in just a year, the party stand to suffer debilitating losses in the November mid-term elections.

Often criticised for appearing cool, celebral and detached, the President came out swinging following the stunning defeat. On Thursday, he took on the financial sector with a vigour that had many supporters asking why it took him so long.

And on Friday afternoon, he made a defiant campaign-style appearance in economically-depressed Ohio, using the word “fight” 12 times as he tried to launch a comeback. His approval rating had slumped below 50 per cent just 12 months after he arrived in the White House.

The tough talk on the financial sector and the focus on the economy reflect his recognition that he needs to strike a more populist combative chord. Mr Clinton also recalibrated his style after the Republicans reclaimed Congress in 1994 and he went on to win an easy second term in 1996.

That defeat in Massachusetts ended the Democrats’ filibuster-proof 60-40 “super-majority” in the Senate, effectively halting their hopes of passing Mr Obama’s signature domestic policy priority of health care reform in its current shape. It was also a blunt wake-up call to a president who himself came to power just a year earlier promising change on the back of popular discontent with the body politic.

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.

“At the start of his administration, Clinton also lost the confidence of middle-class centre ground Americans who did not think he shared their priorities. But he won it back and Obama must do the same thing.”

Mr Obama and Mr Clinton still enjoy an awkward relationship following the clashes of the 2008 primaries. At one point, Mr Clinton famously told friends that his wife’s rival would have to “kiss his ass” to make up for the way he perceived he had been treated by Obama aides on the campaign trail.

After sweeping to power on the back of promises of a “new kind of politics”, the President must deal with disappointed expectations as he reins in his more ambitious plans.

He is likely now to accept scaled back health reforms, make deficit reduction a priority and put liberal priorities such as cutting greenhouse gas emissions and reforming immigration rules on the back-burner.

Mr Obama will also have to placate frustration among Democrats on Capitol Hill who believe that a perceived lack of leadership from the president contributed to the damaging health care imbroglio.

But John Harris, a veteran Washington pundit who wrote The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House and now edits the Politico website, had some simple advice for winning back the doubters.

“Clinton learned a lesson along the way that surely applies equally to Obama: the only thing other politicians really respect is popularity and power,” he observed. “When Clinton’s approval ratings were high, his own party got in line. When they were low, Democrats were happy to pile on.”

And just when it seemed the week could get no worse for the Democrats, the Supreme Court overturned a long-standing ban on spending by corporations, trade unions and pressure groups in candidate elections, ruling that it breached the constitutional right of free speech. On both sides of the politics divide, there was little dispute that the Republicans, already on a roll, would be the major beneficiary of the landmark decision.