Not. Even. Close.
Via The Hill:
President Obama said he is hopeful that Republicans in Congress will be more willing to compromise if he is reelected.
“I do think that should I be fortunate enough to have another four years, the American people will have made a decision,” Obama said in an interview with Time magazine released Thursday. “And hopefully, that will impact how Republicans think about these problems. I believe that in a second term, where [Sen.] Mitch McConnell’s [R-Ky.] imperative of making me a one-term president is no longer relevant, they recognize what the American people are looking for is for us to get things done.” […]
In the Time interview, the president also addressed his previous comment that the biggest mistake of his first term was that he didn’t tell his “story to the American people better.” Republicans have seized on the remark, accusing the president of putting a premium on style rather than substance.
“What I meant by that is that we were in the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime crisis, so we had to just do stuff fast. And sometimes it wasn’t popular,” Obama said. “And we didn’t have the luxury of six months to explain exactly what we were doing with the Recovery Act, which was basically a jobs act and making-sure-middle-class-families-didn’t-fall-into-poverty act.
“And there were all kinds of things we could do to have explained that effectively, but we didn’t have time. The auto bailout — now a lot of people are coming around and saying that was the right thing to do. But at the time, I think it polled at 10 percent. And we didn’t have time to worry about that.”