Obama Interview: 'I Expect to Be Held Accountable'

(July 16) -- President Barack Obama said "nobody in the White House is satisfied with where we are right now" in the still sluggish economy, but he exuded confidence that when voters go to the polls in November they will face "a choice between the policies that got us into this mess and my policies that are getting us out of this mess."

In an interview that aired today on NBC's "Today" show, the president said he is prepared "to be held accountable for the policies that I've put in place," including massive overhauls of the health care and financial systems. Citing those changes, along with investments in education, clean energy and dealing with deficits and entitlements, Obama said: "Those structural challenges have to be fixed. And it's hard because you don't see immediate gratification.

"But what I'd say to the person who's out of a job right now is we are gonna be doing everything we can to create the environment where the private sector can come in and start creating jobs. But I'm not any more satisfied than they are. And until they can find a job, I expect to be held accountable."

Obama, whose job approval ratings are mediocre, still remains more popular than Congress, whose members will face voters this fall. While history shows and current polling predicts that Democrats will lose seats in November, the president echoed his party's pitch to voters to stick with the current majority.

"We had a disaster on our hands," he said of the economic landscape when he took office. "We've been able to stabilize the economy and prevent the freefall. Instead of 750,000 jobs a month being lost, we've now gained jobs in the private sector for five consecutive months. But we've still got a long way to go."

Obama told NBC White House Correspondent Chuck Todd that statistics show his administration is on the right track, even if Republicans have tried to derail his initiatives.

"Washington has spent an inordinate amount of time on politics, who's up, who's down, and not enough on how are we delivering for the American people," he said. "The good news is that, despite no cooperation from the other side, we have, over the last two years, stopped an economic freefall, stabilized the financial sector."

Still, Obama said, "The main thing that keeps me up at night right now is we lost 8 million jobs," and getting them all back will "be a challenge."

The president relayed a conversation he had with investment guru Warren Buffett, the "Oracle of Omaha."

"He said, 'We went through a wrenching recession. And so we have not fully recovered. We're about 40, 50 percent back. But we've still got a long way to go.' And the reason people haven't fully invested yet and started creating as many jobs as we would like is because it takes some time to come back."

Obama said Buffett offered the housing market as an example, noting that historically "about 1.2 million households are formed that buy a house each year. ... But we went through a span of time four or five years, because of the bubble and subprime lending and all the shenanigans that were going on with the mortgage market, where we were building 2 million homes a year."

"Now we're building 500,000. And what Warren pointed out was, look, we're gonna get back to 1.2. But right now we're soaking up a whole bunch of inventory. ... The challenge is to work our way through this recession."

With a little time off for vacation. The president, who heads to Maine and Martha's Vineyard this summer for some R&R, revealed that older daughter Malia, 12, will be going away to camp for a month, something "she's never done before," Obama said. "I may shed a tear when she's on the way out."