Bill Clinton: Romney is Bush policies 'on steroids'

Bill Clinton, without naming Mitt Romney, slapped him with a harsher version of the retro tag Democrats and President Obama have used during a fundraiser for the re-election effort at the home of Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe in Virginia tonight, per the AP:

"Barack Obama deserves to be re-elected president of the United States," Clinton said, because he has clear objectives for the country and is meeting them. Neither Clinton nor Obama mentioned presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney by name, but both Democrats zinged Romney for his economic plan and foreign policy credentials. Romney "basically wants to do what they did before, on steroids," Clinton said, "which will get you the same consequences you got before, on steroids." Obama said he and Hillary Clinton have "spent the past three-and-a-half years cleaning up after other folks' messes." He ridiculed "the presumptive nominee on the other side" for "suddenly saying our No. 1 enemy isn't al-Qaida, it's Russia." "I didn't make that up," Obama said to loud laughter. "I suddenly thought maybe I didn't check the calendar, and we're back in 1975."

The interplay between the two - and the tacit acknowledgment that the current president needs the boost from the former one - is a change from even just two years ago, when Bill Clinton was just starting to emerge as a willing booster of the White House as the Obama administration was facing legislative and political hurdles. Clinton's most recent book was, in small part, a defense of the Obama administration. His main help is likely to be with white working-class voters. But tonight's fundraiser was another post-2008 milestone.

UPDATE: Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul emailed this quote earlier Monday: “President Obama has failed by his own standards: he promised to keep unemployment below 8% with the passage of the ‘stimulus’ bill and to rein in federal spending. Unemployment hasn’t been below 8% since while the nation’s total public debt has reached a record $15.6 trillion. President Obama may be able to convince his friends to tout the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression, but the American people deserve better.”

Maggie Haberman is senior political reporter for Politico.