Bill Clinton: Senate Replacement For Hillary?

UPDATE: Former President Bill Clinton has no interest in replacing his wife in the U.S. Senate. His spokesman told CNN that any speculation that he would be interested is "completely false."

Last week, a Washington Post editorial urged New York Governor David Paterson to "send Bill Clinton to the Senate."

CNN looks at the possibility, which is not entirely without precedent:

If that happened, Clinton would become the third former president to go from the White House to Capitol Hill.

President John Quincy Adams lost his re-election bid in 1828. Two years later he returned to Washington after winning election as a congressman from his home state of Massachusetts. He served in the House of Representatives until his death in 1848.

President Andrew Johnson also served as a Senator from Tennessee in 1875, 7 years after the Senate acquitted him of impeachment charges. He died a few months after taking office.

Bill Clinton would bring gravitas to the job, and he obviously knows his way around Washington.

But some Democratic strategists who used to work for Bill Clinton don't think the former president would want to go from leader of the free world to being the junior senator from New York. Clinton's office deferred to Paterson's office when asked for a comment.

Read more about the competition for Hillary Clinton's Senate seat.