Oh boy.

Via The Hill:

President Obama said that gridlock on Capitol Hill stemmed from an inability to “penetrate the Republican base” and convince voters there that he’s “not the caricature that you see on Fox News or Rush Limbaugh,” rather than his oft-questioned willingness to socialize with lawmakers.

In bonus excerpts from an interview with The New Yorker’s David Remnick, Obama conceded that there was “no doubt that personal relationships matter at the margins and can tip something over the finish line,” and admitted that he “wasn’t in a position to work the social scene in Washington” as the father of two young girls. […]

“The issue has been the inability of my message to penetrate the Republican base so that they feel persuaded that I’m not the caricature that you see on Fox News or Rush Limbaugh, but I’m somebody who is interested in solving problems and is pretty practical, and that, actually, a lot of the things that we’ve put in place worked better than people might think,” Obama said.