Obama says rollout of healthcare.gov is his biggest regret

Speaking on “60 Minutes” on CBS during his final interview as president, the golf-loving Democrat said he “shanked” the rollout of the website provided for the Affordable Care Act.

“You know, if you know you got a controversial program, and you’re setting up a really big, complicated website — website better work on the first day or first week or first month. The fact that it didn’t obviously lost a little momentum,” he said. “That was clearly a management failure.”

Obama said he’s conflicted on whether he should have used the phrase “red line” when talking about Syria using chemical weapons during its civil war.

When the Assad regime eventually did use chemical weapons, Obama did not order a massive escalation in American involvement in the war, as it was thought he would after he made the “red line” comment. He was ripped by Republicans for backing down from the challenge.

Obama said he doesn’t regret issuing the warming to Syria, saying it represented a marking point in when the conflict turned into an even worse humanitarian disaster.

“I don’t regret at all saying that if I saw Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons on his people that that would change my assessments in terms of what we were or were not willing to do in Syria,” Obama said.

“I would have, I think, made a bigger mistake if I had said, ‘Eh, chemical weapons. That doesn’t really change my calculus,'” Obama said. “I think it was important for me as president of the United States to send a message that in fact there is something different about chemical weapons.”

Still, he acknowledged that making that statement and then not escalating American military involvement in the conflict when the moment came was seen as a mistake in Washington.

“If you’re putting all the weight on that particular phrase, then in terms of how it was interpreted in Washington, I think you, you make a legitimate point,” he said.