Obama: Many 'planes in the air' at once

by Mark Silva

"I've got a full plate,'' says President Barack Obama, asked if he feels "burdened'' by that presidential platter.

"I think that we are at an extraordinary moment that is full or peril but full of possibility and I think that's the time you want to be president,'' the president tells Jim Lehrer of the Newshour, in the interview of the president that PBS is airing this evening. While a lot of that talk focuses on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some of it focuses on the breadth of the challenge that confronts the president.

"I think there's a sense that right now we are having to make some very big decisions that will help determine the direction of this country and in ways large and small the direction of the world for the next generation,'' he says. "And I won't lie to you. I wish that they weren't all having to be made at once. It would nice to be able to stage them on one another.

"We'll take, you know, the economy first and then we'll take Afghanistan after that and then Iraq after that and Iran after that and, you know, the banking system somewhere out there, autos, you know,'' he says. "It would be wonderful if we didn't have all the planes in the air at the same time.

"But having said that, I meant what I said in my joint address to Congress,'' Obama says in the interview. " I think that there's -- there's something about this country where hard times, big challenges bring out the best in us. This is when the political system starts to move effectively. This is when people start getting out of the petty and the trivial debates.

"This is when the public starts paying attention in ways that they -- you know, when things are going well, you know, they've got better things to do than to think about public policy, you know,'' Obama tells Lehrer. "So I am -- I am invigorated by the challenges.

"But look, we've got a lot of big stuff ahead of us. Not every decision we're going to make is going to be perfect. Not every plan that we lay out is going to work out exactly as we intended. But if we get the big stuff right then, you know, the ship of state is a -- is a big tanker and, you know, you can't simply reverse direction on the economy or any of these things overnight, but you can start moving in a better trajectory so that 5 years, 10 years down the road you can say, you know, what, because of good decisions now our kids are safer, more secure, more prosperous, more unified than they were before.''

Does that mean he feels like he's "clicking'' now, the interviewer asks.

"Well, I -- I feel like our team is making very good decisions based on the best possible information we have and the -- and the best options available to us,'' the president says.

"And that's all I can ask myself or of them is that we're making the best decisions based on what is good for the American people. And this is a human enterprise, it's not going to be flawless, but -- but I think that -- I think it's fair to say that you haven't seen an administration who's had to come in and juggle this much stuff of such large import this quickly and we're getting a lot of stuff done under that kind of pressure and -- and I'm very proud of the team and what we've done so far.''