On Economy Attacks, Obama Says He Would Say the Same in Romney’s Shoes
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JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — Mitt Romney’s campaign against President Barack Obama has largely revolved around lackluster jobs numbers and a slow recovery out of the recession. But in an interview aired on Sunday, Obama said he couldn’t blame his opponent for choosing that line of attack.
“That is his argument and you don’t hear me complaining about that argument,” he said. “Because if I was in his shoes, I’d be making the same argument.”
On “CBS Sunday Morning,” Charlie Rose asked the president and first lady Michelle Obama to reflect on the last four years in the White House, and where a next term could bring them. When it came to policy, Obama replied by saying that a hurdle for him had been that “one of the things you learn in this office is everything takes a little longer than you’d like.”
“We did an awful lot in the first four years,” the president said, including what he called “components we put in place” for further development of the middle class.
“The question right now for the American people is which vision, mine or Mr. Romney’s, is most likely to deliver for those folks? Because that is where the majority of American people live,” he said.
Rose looked back on the 2008 election, asking the president if something had derided the message of “hope” and “change” central to that year. Obama, who has just returned from campaign trips in Ohio and Virginia, said it was a question he was prepared to answer on the trail.
“I tell people, ‘This campaign’s still about hope.’ If somebody asks me, it’s still about change,” he replied. “Washington still feels as broken as it did four years ago.”
The president added that his most frustrating ordeal in office was trying to continue that message in the present day.
“It’s not the hard work. It’s not the, you know, enormity of the decisions. It’s not the pace,” he said. “It is that I haven’t been able to change the atmosphere here in Washington to reflect the decency and common sense of ordinary people.”
It was an issue, the president admitted, that had enough “blame to go around” for Democrats and Republicans.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio