Obama Presser: I Took "A Shellacking"
CBS News reports:
President Obama said at a press conference Wednesday that the results of yesterday's midterm elections - in which his party lost Control of the House as well as Senate seats and governorships - "underscores for me that I've got to do a better job."
"I won the election in 2008, one of the reasons, I think, that people were excited about the campaign was the prospect that we would change how business is done in Washington," he said. "And we were in such a hurry to get things done that we didn't change how things got done. And I think that frustrated people."
He also placed the blame for the outcome of the midterms on that "very tough decisions" made by his administration during his first two years in office on the stimulus package, the bank bailouts (which were first passed under President Bush) and the auto bailouts.
"I think people started looking at all this and it felt as if government was getting much more intrusive into people's lives than they were accustomed to," he said. "Now, the reason was, it was an emergency situation. But I think it's understandable that folks said to themselves, 'You know, maybe this is the agenda as opposed to a response to an emergency.'"
Continued the president: "And that's something that I think, you know, everybody in the White House understood was a danger. We thought it was necessary. But, you know, I'm sympathetic to folks who looked at it and said, 'This is looking like potential overreach.'"
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