Obama Gives Himself High Rating, Laments Unemployment Statistics
December 17, 2009 by Personal Liberty News Desk
In an interview with Oprah Winfrey that aired Sunday, President Barack Obama gave himself a "good, solid B+" grade for his first 11 months in office.
Obama credited his administration with stabilizing the U.S. economy, winding down the war in Iraq and settling on the best possible plan for a temporary surge into Afghanistan. He also said that America has "reset" its prestige in the eyes of the world and has made progress on halting nuclear development in North Korea and Iran.
The president told Oprah that the only things standing in the way of him receiving a better grade are slower-than-expected progress on healthcare reform and the double-digit unemployment rate.
Obama also said that he was not concerned with the recent dip in his approval rating.
"It was inevitable," he said. "We have 10 percent unemployment. I told Michelle when we got here that in six months my poll numbers will start crashing, so we can’t play to the polls. I’m concerned with where we’ll be in two to three years."
Meanwhile, in a 60 Minutes interview that also aired on Sunday, President Obama spoke out against critics who called his Afghanistan deployment model confusing and contradictory due to the firm deadline of troop withdrawal.
"Forty million people watched" the speech, he said, quoted by The Los Angeles Times. "There shouldn’t be anything confusing about that. . . . That’s something that we executed over the last two years in Iraq. So I think the American people are familiar with the idea of a surge."
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