on the economy” rather than a referendum on him, his policies or the Democratic Party.
While he said he should be held accountable for the economy as the nation’s leader, he did not accept the suggestion that he pursued the wrong agenda over the last two years, and he focused blame on his failure to build public support for what he was doing or to change the way Washington works.
In a session taped for CBS’s “60 Minutes” before Mr. Obama left for Asia, the correspondent Steve Kroft pointed out to the president that Republicans view the election as a referendum on him and the Democrats, and asked if he agreed. “I think first and foremost it was a referendum on the economy,” Mr. Obama said. “And the party in power was held responsible for an economy that is still underperforming.”
The interview was Mr. Obama’s first since the election and largely tracked the sentiments he expressed at his news conference the day after the vote.
The president’s interpretation of the election underscored the contrasting messages the two parties have taken from the elections. Republicans won at least 60 more seats in the House to take control, the largest such gain by either party since 1948, and picked up six more seats in the Senate, putting them close to parity with the Democrats, who maintained a much slimmer majority. Republicans also scored significant victories in governor’s and state legislative races.
Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader slated to become speaker, and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate Republican minority leader, have said the election was a clear verdict on Mr. Obama’s policies. Mr. Boehner told ABC News last week that the president is experiencing “some denial” and Mr. McConnell repeated Sunday that the issue was not the message but the substance.
“I think the president believes that somehow he didn’t – his product was good but he just didn’t sell it well,” Mr. McConnell said on “Face the Nation” on CBS. “I think he’s a good salesman. I think his problem was not his sales job. It was the product. The American people simply did not like what the president and this Congress were doing substantively.”
Surveys of voters at polling places showed that 37 percent said last Tuesday they were casting their votes to express opposition to Mr. Obama’s policies, while 24 percent said they were supporting his policies. The rest said he was not the impetus for their vote. Those numbers are almost identical to those in 2006 when voters cast judgment on President George W. Bush’s policies and Democrats seized control of Congress in a mid-term election they cast as a referendum on the incumbent president.
Mr. Obama made clear in his interview that he sees the economy as the main source of voter frustration. With unemployment stuck for months at 9.6 percent, no other president in decades has gone into a mid-term election with the jobless rate as high for as long. Nearly 9 in 10 voters last week expressed worry about the direction of the economy; four in 10 said reducing deficits should be the first priority while 4 in 10 said job creation should be a priority.
In his interview, Mr. Obama focused on the latter group, which tended to vote more Democratic than those concerned about deficits. To the notion that voters may have sent a message for smaller, less costly, more accountable government, Mr. Obama responded, “First and foremost, they want jobs and economic growth in this country.”
Pressed by Mr. Kroft, he then added that voters also care about spending. “There is no doubt that folks are concerned about debt and deficits,” he said. “I think that is absolutely a priority. And by the way, that’s a concern that I had before I was even sworn in.”
Echoing comments from his news conference, the president expressed his willingness to negotiate with Mr. Boehner and Mr. McConnell on tax cuts and other issues but gave no specific examples of where he would change his position to build consensus.
The president offered praise for the Republican leaders and expressed regret that at times he had gone too far in his campaign rhetoric attacking the opposition. “Both John and Mitch are very smart,” he said. “They’re capable. They have been able to, I think, organize the Republican caucus very effectively in opposition to a lot of the things that we tried to do over the last two years. And that takes real political skill.”
Without mentioning any examples, he said he bore responsibility for some of the tenor of political discourse lately. “I’ve been guilty of that. It’s not just them,” he said. “Part of my promise to the American people when I was elected was to maintain the kind of tone that says we can disagree without being disagreeable. And I think over the course of two years, there have been times where I’ve slipped on that commitment.”
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