President Obama on Friday compared his work to keep the U.S. economy churning to the extra effort he has to put into his physical workouts as he ages.
“We should feel good about the progress we’ve made, understanding that we have still got more work to do,” Obama said Friday while speaking about news that unemployment in January dropped below 5 percent for the first time in eight years. “It’s sort of like … I’m 54 now, so I have to work out harder to stay in shape, and, you know, if I’m feeling good in the gym, I want to acknowledge that what I’m doing is working,” Obama said from the White House briefing room.
“Otherwise, I’ll just go out and have a big double bacon cheeseburger or something, because I’ll think, ‘well, this isn’t working,'” he said about people who are frustrated because they aren’t getting as much from the economy as they want.
“Now, if it’s working, then we should be staying on that same path,” he continued, arguing that his policies have put the country on more stable economic footing than seemed possible when he took office at the beginning of the Great Recession. “That doesn’t mean that I’m where I necessarily want to be. It doesn’t mean that I stop, you know, doing some hard work to get where we need to go.”
