Barack Obama and Bill Clinton put on a display of unity in New York city on Monday evening amid ongoing speculation about renewed tensions between the two presidents.
The 44th and the 42nd occupant of the White House are side-by-side at three Manhattan fundraisers designed to stock Obama's warchest in anticpation of a tough election battle ahead. The events promise to net several million dollars, but at a possible cost of reviving discussions about their fraught relationship sparked by recent off-message comments by Clinton.
In a CNN interview last week, Clinton took a sharply divergent line on Obama's opponent, Mitt Romney. He remarked on Romney's "sterling" business record – a discordant note given that the Obama For America team was at that moment launching a sustained attack on Romney for his time at the private equity firm, Bain Capital.
In the same CNN interview, Clinton stressed that he was convinced Obama would win the November election by "five or six points", but those remarks were drowned out amid the cacophony of the 24-hours news cycle.
Obama is stepping up his fundraising activities, aware that he faces a daunting army of Republican outliers that threatens to carpet-bomb the nation with $1bn-worth of negative attack ads. With that prospect on the horizon, Obama clearly sees Clinton as a valuable political and financial asset.
The benefit to Obama is heightened by his difficulties with the economy, in the wake of last week's poor job figures that saw unemployment rise to 8.2%. Clinton brings with him memories of happier economic times, given the relative prosperity of the 1990s.
The two presidents, who last appeared together in Virginia in April, began the fundraising blitz at the grand upper East Side home of Marc Lasry, a private supporter of Obama's. Lasry is a principal partner at an asset management firm that has about $13bn under its control.
Following food offerings of pigs in a blanket, shrimp and sushi rolls, Clinton said a few words, sticking this time to a more on-message theme that compared the Republican party's economic policy to the financial meltdown in Europe, saying that it had "adopted Europe's economic policy" and was propagating the politics of "constant conflict."
Obama, on his part, used the gathering of wealthy Democratic donors to try to wrap himself in a centrist mantle by praising Clinton's record as a moderate. He said: "There were times when Democrats got a little excessive. We had a little too much faith in government; a little too much faith in regulation... [and] Bill Clinton helped to correct some of our excesses."
The presidential double act will regroup at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel for a gala, where some 500 guests will contribute a total of $1.3m to hear Jon Bon Jovi. The trilogy events ends on Broadway at at the New Amsterdam theatre where the cheapest tickets are priced $250, bringing the grand total for the evening to more than $4m.
That is just the start of Obama's efforts to milk New York City of its riches. Next week Sarah Jessica Parker, backed by Vogue editor Anna Wintour, will wade into the fray by holding a dinner at her Manhattan home on behalf of the person whom she calls in a new TV advert, "that guy".
"The guy who ended the war in Iraq, the guy who says you should be able to marry anyone you want, the guy who created four million jobs," she says.
The New York events are testimony to the enduring money-drawing power of Bill Clinton. Both through his own philanthropic efforts at the Clinton Global Initiative, that have raised more than $57bn in commitments over the past five years, and as a leading Democratic figure, the former president has proved to be one of the most successful fundraisers in US history.
But Clinton's value to Obama has long been qualified by suspicion verging on occasional open hostility. Amid the brutal 2008 primary battle between Hillary Clinton and Obama, much of the open animosity between the two sides was directed to and from Bill.
Bill famously called Obama a "fairy tale" candidate, while Obama reciprocated by calling Bill's intervention in the presidential race "pretty troubling".
Though there has been a thawing since Obama entered the White House, with Clinton lending him valuable support during his Congressional struggles over healthcare reform, there have been periodic difficulties. Last year Clinton brought out a book on economic policy called Back to Work that was interpreted, at least in part, as criticism of Obama's handling of the financial crisis.
Despite the ongoing tensions, tonight's events underline that Obama still needs Clinton. And it is possible that Clinton needs Obama, particularly if Hillary ignores her own protestations to the contrary and decides to run for the White House in 2016.
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