WASHINGTON (CBSDC/AP) — Former President Bill Clinton praised GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s business career Thursday night.

As President Obama and his campaign attack Romney’s tenure at private equity firm Bain Capital, Clinton said that the former Massachusetts governor has a “sterling” business record.

“I don’t think we ought to get into the position where we say this is bad work. This is good work,” Clinton told CNN. “A man who’s been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold.”

Clinton later added that he believes Obama will win a second term in office.

Clinton’s comments come nearly two weeks after Newark Mayor Cory Booker called the campaign attack ads on Bain Capital “nauseating.” Booker subsequently backed off the remarks in a YouTube video, saying he was just expressing frustration with negative campaigning.

The Obama campaign has been doubling down on Romney’s tenure at Bain, a private equity firm he helped found in 1984. In ads and in Web videos, the campaign has drawn attention to companies that Bain took over only to close them or let them fail, costing jobs and hurting communities. Obama also has dispatched Vice President Joe Biden to battleground states — and specifically economically struggling areas filled with white blue-collar voters — to assail Romney on the matter.

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