Bill Clinton and Jerry Brown: A Bromance or Frenemies for Life?

Clinton is thinner than when he and Jerry Brown tangled in 1992, and his hair has gone completely white -- Brown's hair has almost completely disappeared -- but the two Democrats seem different in a more fundamental way. These days, instead of sniping at each other, they have joined forces to help Brown in his bid to regain a job he held from 1975 to 1983.

The weekend's fun began when Clinton barnstormed Southern California, appearing in Orange County on behalf of Rep. Loretta Sanchez, who is locked in a tough race with Republican challenger Van Tran, and continued Friday night at a get-out-the-vote rally at UCLA attended by Brown and Gavin Newsom, the Democrats' candidate for lieutenant governor.

Newsom, mayor of San Francisco, was Bill Clinton's first choice for governor of California, but when Newsom dropped out last year, the former president settled on a man with whom he had a long and contentious history, starting when they both sought the Democratic presidential nomination 18 years ago. Today, however, the two men's mutual interests have harmonically converged: Brown wants his old job back and Clinton is traversing the country attempting to show he has the juice to help get Democrats elected.

Earlier this week Clinton was in his old home town attempting to stave off the Republican tide that threatens to engulf Arkansas. He found the sledding a bit easier in heavily Democratic California, where even Meg Whitman, Brown's Republican opponent and the former CEO of eBay, had some conciliatory words for the 42^nd president.

"I think there were many good things about Bill Clinton's presidency," Whitman told supporters at a dueling GOP rally at the downtown theater LA Live. "He was a big eBay buyer. He bought a lot of his Clinton memorabilia on eBay. But he's obviously out here because he's a Democrat, a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, and he's trying to help Democrats across the country."

And what would an event held in a Los Angeles theater be without a movie? The Whitman camp didn't disappoint, either, showing the audience an eight-minute short film called "The Way We Were," featuring insults hurled back and forth between Jerry Brown and Bill Clinton in the days before their détente. "It's was all in good fun," one Whitman adviser told Politics Daily. "But the film could have been longer -- these two have a long history." Click play below to watch the full short film screened at the Whitman rally, as provided exclusively to Politics Daily:

This was not the first time Camp Whitman has enjoyed itself at Brown's expense over the Brown-Clinton connection. It produced an ad in September consisting of an old clip of Clinton telling Larry King that Brown was lying about his record. Brown's initial response to that ad was to lash out at Meg Whitman -- and Bill Clinton.

"Meg Whitman -- she stops at nothing. She's even got Clinton lying about me," Brown said in impromptu remarks to supporters in East Los Angeles. "Did you see that? Where he said I raised taxes. It's a lie ..." Brown then continued: "I mean Clinton's a nice guy, but who ever said he always told the truth? You remember, right? There's that whole story there about did he or didn't he. Okay, I did not have taxes with this state."

Brown apologized by the end of the afternoon for that last crack, which was a reference to Clinton's infamous "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" assertion. And even more recently, Brown apologized when he and aides were caught on tape discussing whether they should call Meg Whitman "a whore" for dealing with special interests.

These latest developments have revealed the toll this expensive gubernatorial campaign is taking on its participants. It also somewhat undermined the widespread impression that Brown had become warmer and more self-deprecating than when he was a younger man. Some veteran California political insiders have found him more appealing this time around. But Brown is up against a wealthy and self-made opponent who is breaking all known spending records in a year that is shaping up as an inhospitable one for career politicians, especially Democrats. Thus the call to Bill Clinton, a man Jerry Brown once dubbed "The Prince of Sleaze."