WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Bill Clinton says he believes President Barack Obama can win re-election if he can persuade voters he steadied a shaky economy.

Clinton tells ABC's "Good Morning America" he believes likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney will have a difficult time reconciling positions he's taken during the primary season with what he'll say against Obama in the fall.

Clinton was asked if Obama can argue that Americans are better off than they were four years ago, as he argued in winning re-election in 1996.

He replies that if Obama can't make that case, "it is only because of the financial collapse that occurred in September 2008" before Obama took office.

Clinton says Obama can assert that "we put a floor under the recession and kept is from becoming a depression."