Mr Obama’s interview on ABC’s The View was interpreted as an attempt to win back women voters at a time when his approval ratings are falling.
Mr Obama kissed all five hostesses, including the show’s creator and executive producer, Barbara Walters, (80), who has just returned from heart surgery, and comedian Whoopi Goldberg.
He was relaxed and humorous, but also serious and eager to defend his record.
He spoke fondly of his wife and daughters, mocked his own poor grasp of pop culture and three times criticised America’s “24/7 media cycle”.
Yet some found fault with the appearance. “I think the president should be accessible, should answer questions that aren’t pre-screened, but I think there should be a little bit of dignity to the presidency,” Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor Ed Rendell said on MSNBC.
Ms Walters remarked that Mr Obama had taken “a little bit of a beating over the last month.”
“The truth is, it’s not tough for me,” Mr Obama said. But life was difficult for Americans who’ve lost jobs and and seen the value of their homes and pensions shrink. “I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about me. I spend a lot of time worrying about them,” he said.
Mr Obama castigated “the media culture [which] right now loves conflict” and accused the media of generating “a phoney controversy” in the case of Shirley Sherrod, the African-American official who was last week falsely reported to have made racist comments against whites.
Ms Walters asked Mr Obama why, with a white mother, he did not describe himself as bi-racial.
When he was young, he said, “I realised that if the world saw me as African-American . . . that was something I could go ahead and embrace. We are sort of a mongrel people. We are all kind of mixed up. That’s actually true for white America as well. I am less interested in how we label ourselves. I’m more interested in how we treat each other . . .”
The unauthorised publication this week of 92,000 classified reports on the war in Afghanistan “just confirmed what I was saying”, Mr Obama said. “From 2004 onwards, Afghanistan was under-resourced. We took our eye off the ball.”
The border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan remains “the epicentre of terrorism targeting the US”. A year from now, he promised to “start thinning out our troops . . . I’m not interested in an open-ended commitment”.
The president laid to rest rumours that he will attend Chelsea Clinton’s wedding in upstate New York tomorrow. “I was not invited because I think Hillary and Bill properly want to keep this a thing for Chelsea and her husband,” he said.
Defending his own record, the president noted that all Americans will soon be eligible for health insurance, “even those with pre-existing conditions. Tobacco companies can’t market to kids. We have a credit card law with no hidden fees, the toughest financial regulation reform law since the Great Depression, a whole range of reforms on education . . .”
Commentators have repeatedly urged Mr Obama to display more emotion, for example, anger in the case of the Gulf oil spill. “The reason I seem calm all the time, even if we are going through some turbulence, is I try to take the long view,” he said. “I try to say, if I wake up today and I’m doing a good job, somewhere down the road, that’s going to pay off. People will be able to look back and say, ‘He made that decision based on what’s good for the country as opposed to short-term politics.’ I think that’s the way to govern.”
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