President Obama admits he didn’t change Washington in the way he wanted to when he first entered the Oval Office and thinks he underestimated how partisan the capital is.
“I was surprised and — and continue to be surprised — by the severity of partisanship in this town,” Obama said during an interview on “60 Minutes” Sunday. “And I think that I’d been warned about it. You’ll remember, in the campaign back in 2007, 2008, people would say, ‘Oh, he’s being naive. He thinks that there’s no red states and blue states. And wait ’til he gets here.’
“And I will confess that — I didn’t fully appreciate the ways in which individual senators or members of Congress now are, are pushed to the extremes by their, their voter bases. I did not expect, particularly in the midst of crisis, just how severe that partisanship would be.”
Republicans charge that Obama himself was the cause of plenty of the partisanship by failing to reach out sufficiently, demonizing them with the public, and ramming through legislation that had provisions they strongly opposed.
Obama said that the problem culminated in his inability to get even a single confirmation hearing from Republicans for Judge Merrick Garland, his pick to replace deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
He said that’s one of his great regrets about his final year in office and representative of how difficult it could be working with congressional Republicans.
“I would’ve liked to have gotten that one last Supreme Court justice in there,” he said.
“But we couldn’t even get a hearing. Trying to get the other side of the aisle to work with us on issues, in some cases, that they professed, originally, an interest in,” Obama said, “and saying to them, ‘Hold on a second. You guys used to think this was a good idea. Now, just because I’m supporting it, you can’t change your mind.’ But they did.”
Obama said he was very good at campaigning and getting public opinion to swing to his side but wasn’t as effective doing that from the White House.
He said it’s his fault that he wasn’t able to shape public opinion in a way that would help him advance his policies.
“There were big stretches, while governing, where even though we were doing the right thing, we weren’t able to mobilize public opinion firmly enough behind us to weaken the resolve of the Republicans to stop opposing us or to cooperate with us,” he said. “And there were times during my presidency where I lost the PR battle.”
Only the American people will be able to change Washington, and that’s through Congress, he said.
But he seemed to express pessimism.”Members of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, are motivated by all kinds of issues. They’re sincerely interested in the economy, in terrorism, in social issues. But the one overriding thing they’re interested in is getting re-elected.”
“And if they think that it’s harder for them to get re-elected by cooperating with each other, then they won’t cooperate.”
