"The man who has been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold," said Bill Clinton about Mitt Romney.

What's Clinton's game? He's not joking, and I don't think there's a big stress on "threshold" (that is, the notion that Romney is minimally qualified but not more).

Unlike some fellow Democrats, Clinton acknowledged Romney's time at Bain Capital formed a "good business career." He also acknowledged that the nature of private equity meant some companies inevitably fail.

"There is a lot of controversy about that," Clinton told guest host Harvey Weinstein, who has raised millions of dollars for Obama's campaign. "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."

Key phrase: "you and I have friends here who invest in companies." The Democrats are vulnerable themselves and can't afford the meme private equity is evil. But if this problem lay in wait, why did the Obama campaign commit itself so deeply to the Bain attack?

The former president continued, "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."

While Clinton is not the first Democrat to defend Bain amid political attacks, he is the highest profile. In May Newark, New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker said he didn't want to "indict private equity," saying attacks on Romney's tenure didn't take into account the successes the company had. And on Thursday, current Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick called Bain "a perfectly fine company."

Help me figure this out. Is Clinton really about saving the Obama campaign from a problem it unwittingly created? Or is Clinton about the Clintons, whose interests with Obama intersect only incompletely.