The Hill News

Former President Clinton will be surprised if President Obama doesn't get reelected.

Asked in an interview with CNBC on Friday if he thought Obama would win a second term, Clinton said, “I do, yeah.”

"I'll be surprised if he doesn't win," he said.

Clinton's optimistic comment about Obama's presidential prospects contrast with ones he made during the early primary months of the last presidential election.

In 2008, when his wife, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) was running against Obama, the former president was much less complimentary about Obama's candidacy. Bill Clinton once said that the main thrust of Obama's campaign consisted of his speaking skill and his opposition to the Iraq War.

"That is the central argument for his campaign," Clinton said in 2008. "It doesn’t matter that ‘I’ started running for president less than a year after ‘I’ got to the senate after the Illinois senate. ‘I’ am a gre! at speaker and a charismatic figure and ‘I’ am the only one who had the judgment to oppose this war from the beginning â€" always always always."