President Obama appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday and repeated his same speech on Washington gridlock, his record and the reason the media is to blame for his low job approval rating.
He discussed the midterm elections — “We got beat” — and while he took some responsibility for the Democrats’ loss, he quickly moved on to his “things are better” quotes.
“They see Washington gridlocked and they’re frustrated. And they know one person in Washington and that’s the president of the United States. So I’ve got to make this city work better for them,” he said.
But he said his low approval rating isn’t because of the job he is doing. He said it is because the media only focuses on the problem, not his solutions.
While things like Ebola and ISIS made the time before the midterms seem like it was bad, Obama told host Bob Schieffer that he believed things were worse when he first took office in 2009.
“It was worse, because the economy not just here in the United States but globally was in a freefall. I have great confidence in the American people and I have great confidence in this administration being able to work through and eventually solve problems. Sometimes we don’t do it at the speed that keeps up with, you know, the press cycle,” he said.
He gave the example of the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and said that no one cares about it because “we actually had a really effective response.”
“When you solve the problem, sometimes the cameras have gone away,” he said.
Schieffer pointed out that Obama, for the most part, doesn’t seem to like politics in the way that his predecessors did — an idea that seemed to bother the president.
“I love this job,”Obama said. “Here’s, I think, a fair statement: If your name is Barack Hussein Obama, you had to have liked politics in order to get into this office… I got into politics because I believed I could make a difference, and I would not have been successful and would not be sitting at this desk every day if I didn’t love politics.”
Watch the clip below:
