Austin Wright :
President Barack Obama is taking blame for the Democratic drubbing in the midterm elections, saying “the buck stops right here at my desk.”
“Whenever, as the head of the party, it doesn’t do well, I’ve got to take responsibility for it,” the president said in a wide-ranging interview aired Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Obama also said one lesson from the midterms was that his party has to do a better job selling its policies.
(Also on POLITICO: Can D.C. get something done? Fat chance)
“We’ve got to reach out to the other side and, where possible, persuade,” he told host Bob Schieffer in the interview taped Friday at the White House before he left on a week-long trip to Asia. “I think there are times, there’s no doubt about it, where, you know, I think we have not been successful in going out there and letting people know what it is that we’re trying to do and why this is the right direction.”
In the interview, Obama also discussed his pending executive order on immigration and his decision to increase the number of US troops in Iraq.
On immigration, Obama delivered an ultimatum to House Speaker John Boehner: Pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill by the end of the year or there will be an executive order – a step the Ohio Republican said would “poison the well” for cooperation with Congress. The House is unlikely to pass an immigration bill before the new Congress is seated in January.
“John, I’m going to give you some time, but if you can’t get it done before the end of the year I’m going to have to take the steps that I can to improve the system,” Obama said. “Every day that I wait we’re misallocating resources, we’re deporting people that shouldn’t be deported, we’re not deporting folks that are dangerous and need to be deported.”
Obama also said time hasn’t run out for an immigration bill – and that legislation passed next year would supersede his executive order.
“If, in fact, a bill gets passed, nobody’s going to be happier than me to sign it because that means it will be permanent rather than temporary,” Obama said.
“They have the ability, the authority, the control to supersede anything I do through my executive authority by simply carrying out their functions over there. And if in fact it’s true that they want to pass a bill, they’ve got good ideas, nobody’s stopping them.”
On Iraq, Obama said his decision Friday to double the number of US troops there to about 3,000 signaled a new, offensive stage in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
“Phase One was getting an Iraqi government that was inclusive and credible, and we now have done that,” Obama said. “So, now what we’ve done is rather than just try to halt ISIL’s momentum, we’re now in a position to start going on some offense.”
The US troops in Iraq would not be engaged in combat, he said, but would be training Iraqi recruits, giving them equipment and helping them with strategy, logistics and close air support.
“Now what we need is ground troops, Iraqi ground troops, that can start pushing back,” Obama said.
The president also said it remained U.S. policy that Syrian President Bashar Assad must go – but that the problem cannot be solved militarily.
“It’s an almost absolute certainty that he has lost legitimacy with such a large portion of the country by dropping barrel bombs and killing children and destroying villages that were defenseless, that he can’t regain the kind of legitimacy that would stitch that country back together again,” Obama said.
“Our priority is to go after ISIL,” he added. “And so what we have said is that we are not engaging in a military action against the Syrian regime. We are going after ISIL facilities and personnel who are using Syria as a safe haven, in service of our strategy in Iraq. We do want to see a political settlement inside of Syria … We can’t solve that militarily, nor are we trying to.”
