Obama says did not ‘overpromise’ US economy
WASHINGTON, Dec 10, AFP:
President Barack Obama has said he did not oversell his plan to fix
the struggling US economy, insisting the nation's woes had been mounting
for 20 years, in comments to CBS News released Friday. "I didn't
overpromise. And I didn't underestimate how tough this was going to be,"
Obama said, according to excerpts from an interview to be broadcast in
full on the CBS News program "60 Minutes" on Sunday.
"I always believed that this was a long-term project. Reversing
structural problems in our economy that have been building up for two
decades, that was going to take time," after entering office, the
president said.
"It was going to take more than a year. It was going to take more
than two years. It was going to take more than one term. Probably takes
more than one president," Obama said.
Obama, who defeated Republican nominee John McCain in the 2008
election on a promise of "Yes We Can," entered the White House in
January 2009 while the US economy was still in recession as a result of
the global financial crisis.
During the campaign, Obama had pledged to restore America's economic
dominance and gained the upper hand in a tight race after McCain
blundered on the economy.
Although the United States exited the recession under Obama's
leadership, the American economy has been plagued by high unemployment
since, and despite falling last month, joblessness remains stubbornly
high at 8.6 percent.
Obama admitted in the interview that Americans "who are struggling
right now, they have every reason to be impatient," but likened himself
to the captain of a ship "going through really bad storms." "No matter
how well we're steering the ship, if the boat's rocking back and forth
and people are getting sick and...they're being buffeted by the winds
and the rain," the president said.
"People are going to say, 'You know what? A good captain would have
had us in some smooth waters and sunny skies, at this point.' And I
don't control the weather," Obama added.
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