President Clinton: Mitt Romney had a 'good business career,' but has wrong ideas for the country

Republicans and the Romney campaign will no doubt crow over this video of President Clinton because he says Mitt Romney had a "sterling" business career, but even though Clinton praised Romney's personal success in business, he still said there was "controversy" about Romney's record and'most importantly'Clinton said that President Obama would do more than Romney to help the country as a whole.

I think he had a good business career. The -- there is a lot of controversy about that. But if you go in and you try to save a failing company, and you and I have friends here who invest in companies, you can invest in a company, run up the debt, loot it, sell all the assets, and force all the people to lose their retirement and fire them.

Or you can go into a company, have cutbacks, try to make it more productive with the purpose of saving it. And when you try, like anything else you try, you don't always succeed. [...] So I don't think that we ought to get into the position where we say this is bad work. This is good work. I think, however, the real issue ought to be, what has Governor Romney advocated in the campaign that he will do as president? What has President Obama done and what does he propose to do? How do these things stack up against each other?

That's the most relevant thing. There's no question that in terms of getting up and going to the office and, you know, basically performing the essential functions of the office, the man who has been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold. But they have dramatically different proposals. And it's my opinion, anyway, that the Obama proposals and the Obama record will be far better for the American economy and most Americans than those that Governor Romney has laid out. And that's what the election ought to be about.

I don't think President Clinton was praising corporate buyout specialists who "invest in a company, run up the debt, loot it, sell all the assets, and force all the people to lose their retirement and fire them" and even if he were, it wouldn't help Mitt Romney. Instead, I think Clinton was outlining what the controversy about Mitt Romney's record was about'and then saying that in his view, the reason why he supports President Obama over Mitt Romney isn't because of the controversy, but rather is because he likes Obama's policies more than Romney's.

So, yes, President Clinton said Mitt Romney was very successful in business. Nobody doubts that'after all, he's made many hundreds of millions of dollars over the years. And while Romney says that his personal business success is the reason why he should be elected, President Clinton says the real question should be whether Romney or Obama would do more to help regular Americans'and his answer to that question is President Obama.