Former president Bill Clinton says all the political fighting in Washington, D.C., is hurting the economy, and the American people themselves are partly to blame because they keep electing some of the biggest brawlers.

"We need a little bit of help from the American people," Clinton said on ABC's This Week With Christiane Amanpour. "I mean, conflict has proved to be remarkably good politics.

"It's very hard for the people in Washington, who got there based on pure conflict, pure attack, pure ideology, to take it seriously when their same constituents are saying please do something positive," Clinton added. "That's not how they got elected."

Clinton made the television talk show rounds today as he prepares to convene the annual meeting of his Clinton Global Initiative this week in New York City. This year's main topic is jobs -- both in the U.S. and worldwide -- and one of the speakers is President Obama.

In his ABC interview, Clinton said some local communities are doing well economically because there are "networks of cooperation" among different interests.

"We live in a time where there's this huge disconnect between the way the political system works and the way the economic system works," Clinton said.

"Every place the American economy is booming, cooperation is the order of the day," Obama said. "But conflict is still good politics in Washington."

"So," he added, "until the American people make it clear that -- however they voted in past elections -- they want these folks to work together and to do something, there's going to be a little ambivalence in Washington."

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