President Barack Obama is home.

Home, where the hard work is.

With stops in 20 nations behind him, said to be the most ambitious international itinerary of any first-year president, Obama faces the closing innings of a domestic policy year in which he insisted upon a sweeping health-care reform - by year's end, the president insisted.

Talk on Capitol Hill already has turned to a new deadline for passage of the legislation: The president's first State of the Union address in January, a fitting stage upon which to hail the health-care initiatives which he made the singular most important demand of his first year.

This isn't the only moving goal post: Obama, during his first days in office, vowed to close the U.S. military-run prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in one year. This week, he allowed that Guantanamo will take a little longer -- the closing promised sometime next year.

The sheer breadth of Obama's first-year agenda - health-care, alternative energy development, recovery from the worst recession since the Great Depression and the charting of a new course in Afghanistan while withdrawing American forces from Iraq - may defie the setting of hard deadlines. The depth of the partisan divide on Capitol Hill is another factor - as evidenced by an economic stimulus that passed without a single Republican vote in the House, a health-care bill that passed the House by 220-215, with but one Republican vote, an energy bill with "cap and trade'' limits on greenhouse gas emissions that cleared the House only with the help of a handful of Republicans, eight.

Of all this, only the economic stimulus has found its way into law so far, and the White House was having trouble this week accounting for where the money is going.

And as the sun rose in Washington today, with the president just returned from an eight-day trek across Asia at a time in which the international goals which the president has set appear no closer to achievement than they were at the start of this year, the American public's approval of the job that the president is performing stood at just 50 percent in the daily tracking of the Gallup Poll -- a floor which the president has seen several times since August.

Obama is home for the holidays -- no real political break, though.

He's getting grey, he acknowledged this week.

Near the end of 2009, the president maintains that he isn't even thinking of 2012 at this point - and says that he is content to let the chips fall where they may. He said this, in an interview with CNN:

"If I feel like I've made the very best decisions for the American people and three years from now I look at it, and my, you know, poll numbers are in the tank because we've gone through these wrenching changes, you know, politically I'm in a tough spot, I'll feel all right about myself,'' he said. "I'd feel a lot worse, if at a time of such urgency for the American people I was spending a lot of time thinking about how I could position myself to ensure reelection.

"Because if I were doing that right now, I wouldn't have taken on health care, I wouldn't be taking on things that are unpopular,'' the president said. "I wouldn't be closing Guantanamo. There are a whole series of choices that I'm making that I know are going to create some political turbulence. But I think they're the right thing to do, and history will bear out my theories or not.''

Sarah Palin was box office on FOX News this week - handing Sean Hannity one of his highest-rated shows.

Someone else drew a crowd at FOX this week, too: President Barack Obama.

While Hannity's audience of more than 4 million viewers with the author of Going Rogue aboard at the start of her national book tour well exceeded the 2 million-plus turnout that the FOX evening news got with a long-sought Obama interview, both shows were ratings leaders for the No. 1 cable news network:

Hannity's ratings were his second-highest for the year, according to the Nielsen Media Research count, and he beat the network's top-drawing Bill O'Reilly, who had 3.868 million viewers Wednesday night.

Nielsen found that FOX News Channel's Hannity drew 4.2 million viewers with Palin's appearance - far surpassing the competition in the time slot: MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, with 957,000 viewers, and CNN's Larry King, with 835,000.

FOX's Special Report with Bret Baier, airing an interview of Obama conducted by FOX White House correspondent Major Garrett in China, drew 2.235 million viewers - a number which FOX will take as a sign of playng to a wide audience.

Baier's competition in the time-slot trailed, as it usually does in FOX's audience share of the cable news market - with CNN's Situation Room drawing 546,000 viewers and MSNBC's Ed Show drawing 495,000 viewers - Nielsen reported of the night's run of cable news viewership.

Palin told Hannity that the military should have used a little profiling in the case of Nadal Malik Hasan, the Army major accused of killing 13 and wounding 29 at Fort Hood, Texas, in a shooting rampage: "I say profiling in the context of doing whatever we can to save innocent American lives, I'm all for it, then."

And Obama allowed in his interview with Garrett that the U.S. military-run prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, won't be closed by the January deadlne he set -- but rather sometime next year.

"I'm not disappointed,'' Obama said. "I knew this was going to be hard, it's hard not only because of the politics, people I think understandably are fearful after a lot of years where they were told that Guantanamo was critical to keeping terrorists out. ''

President Barack Obama says he "probably won't'' be reading Sarah Palin's Going Rogue, so radio's Mark Levin asked Palin: Has she considered sending him the TelePrompTer edition?

"You know what,'' Palin replied, laughing, "when I heard that, though, I thought, good, at a moment like this in history, I'd rather that he be spending his time reading the next fiscal year federal budget. He better really dig into that, and start reining it in.''

Does she think, the host asked Palin on The Mark Levin Show -- one of the few media interviews that Palin was conducting at the start of her book tour -- if she had gone to an Ivy League school, rather than starting in Idaho and Alaska, and hung out in New York or San Francisco, she might be the "darling of the left.''

"I tell my dad that, "I say, Dad, if you would have just given me a backpack and a passport when I was 18 years old after graduating from high school and let me travel Europe...' she said. "You know what the rest of us did, we worked our butts off to get through school.''

As much as the Left tries to dismiss her, Levin suggested, they hang on her every word.

"I do wonder why they do... 'Dismiss it, man, move on,''' Palin said. "What color toenail polish is she wearing today?...That stuff cracks me up.''

How about that Newsweek cover photo of her in tights from her Runner's World shoot?

"Maybe that's what our society needs, is more of that revelation of that mainstream media and what their agenda is, let it be revealed,'' Palin told Levin, "and I have to be the person used as a tool, fine, let them do it.''

If she had to describe her philosophy, her "common-sense conservatism,'' what is that?

"I believe that history teaches us lessons, and we're idiots if we don't learn from history,'' Palin said, suggesting there is a lot to be learned from Ronald Reagan's handling of the economy and national security matters. "A common-sense conservative looks at history, finds out how did we screw up in history, how did we implement solutions and we go from there.''

The White House is pushing back on the alleged "fiction'' of jobs created or saved under the $787-billion federal timulus bill - particularly what it views as the fiction surrounding reports that Recovery.gov, the official online accounting of where all the money is going, listed all sorts of money going into congressional districts that don't exist.

At the same time, the White House is citing an odd statistic in noting that the government doesn't always get its numbers quite right the first time around.

Look at the numbers of jobs lost last year, the White House notes today: With payroll employment for 2008, the original take on the average monthly decline was 157,000. The revised average monthly decline was 230,000 -- "46 percent lower than original,'' notes a spokeswoman for the Recovery Act, reporting on the White House blog today.

"From the beginning, even before the data was collected,'' the administration's Liz Ozborn writes of the Recovery Act accounting, "administration officials said repeatedly that they did not expect the initial reports to be perfect, but certainly expected them to provide an unprecedented and largely accurate look at the Recovery Act at work - and they do.''

That should lend a lot of confidence in the numbers.

The administration blogs on the "FICTION: The reports recipients of Recovery Act funds filed are riddled with errors.''

The "FACT,'' it reports, is that "more than 130,000 reports were collected from recipients who were required to fill out 99 different data fields - that's over 12 million pieces of information collected directly from those putting the funds to work.

" Much has been made of incorrectly coded Congressional Districts, but that issue - which the Recovery Board has already fixed - affected about 1 percent of reports. And other potential over or under-counts of jobs you may have seen highlighted in the media amount to less than 5 percent of all reports.''

More from the White House on fact versus fiction:

"FICTION: The Administration is misleading people about where Recovery Act money is going.

FACT: The reports you see on Recovery.gov were filed by over 130,000 recipients of Recovery Act dollars and they were responsible for inputting the information - including their Congressional District. We don't expect that these recipients - many of which are small community organizations or businesses - will do this perfectly the first time out of the gate, but we do take our role reviewing the reports very seriously and continue to work with the recipients to improve the accuracy of their reports. The fact is, though, that the errors you are seeing are simply typos or basic human error.

FICTION: The jobs that were listed in non-existent Congressional Districts were not real.

FACT: The jobs and related projects listed are legitimate - they were just coded in the wrong Congressional District. The Recovery Board moved quickly to correct the coding and posting error - but before that happened, the public was still able to click through to find the address of the recipient and confirm their correct Congressional District on their own.

FICTION: The Administration has failed to meet expectations it set for the quality of data it would collect.

FACT: From the beginning, even before the data was collected, Administration officials said repeatedly that they did not expect the initial reports to be perfect, but certainly expected them to provide an unprecedented and largely accurate look at the Recovery Act at work - and they do. We will continue to collect this information every three months and we expect the data we collect to get sharper and more precise each time we do it.

FICTION: These errors mean that none of the reports and related jobs numbers can be trusted.

FACT: Overall, less than 5 percent of the reports have been identified as potential over or under-counts of jobs. That is a lower possible revision rate than most long-standing, widely-accepted government economic indicators. Take for example:

• Payroll Employment, 2008: Original Average Monthly Decline - 157,000, Revised Average Monthly Decline -230,000, 46 percent lower than original.''

The House's health care bill, we were reminded, weighed in at over 20 pounds. The Senate's bill, we're told, is bigger than War and Peace.

Both of them also offer health care for millions of Americans uninsured.

And Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah has a prescription for what the public should do if the Congress happens to pass all of this into law:

"Rebel.''

That was the word from Hatch this morning on cable news' FOX & Friends, as the Senate's Democratic leadership attempts to muster the votes by the end of this week to advance Senate Majority Harry Reid's health-care bill to a debate sometime after Thanksgiving.

"Thanks to the Senate's hard work,'' President Barack Obama said in a statement issued by the White House as he concludes his trek across Asia, "we're closer than ever to enacting solutions to these (health-care) problems. I look forward to working with the Senate and House to get a finished bill to my desk as soon as possible."

Reid's bill weighed in at about $850 billion over the coming 10 years, with the potential for cutting the deficit by more than $100 over that period, according to the Congressional Budget Office's look at the legislation. The $1.2-trillion bill which passed the House by a narrow vote of 220-215 is more costly, but also offers health insurance coverage to a somewhat greater percentage of uncovered Americans.

"I was particularly pleased to see that the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the bill will reduce the deficit by $127 billion over the next 10 years and as much as $650 billion in the decade following, saving hundreds of billions while extending coverage to 31 million more Americans,'' Obama said.

"From Day One, our goal has been to enact legislation that offers stability and security to those who have insurance and affordable coverage to those who don't, and that lowers costs for families, businesses and governments across the country. ''

Hatch has another take on it:

Reid's ability to deliver 60 votes to advance the bill is another question - with some willing, perhaps to vote to move it to debate while unwilling to move it to a vote.

"It all depends on Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and the two senators from Arkansas, and of course Landrieu down there in New Orleans in Louisiana,'' Hatch said of Reid's vote count. "don't know how they could vote for this bill...

"If you can't get 70 or 80 votes on a bill that affects one-sixth of the American economy, you know it is a lousy bill,'' the Republican senator maintained. "This is a lousy bill that is going to cost American tax payers like mad for the rest of our lives, if they happen to pass it. I hope the American people rebel."

FOX has done it again, and this time, once again, FOX says its misplay of the wrong crowd video was another regrettable mistake.

Today, FOX News host Gregg Jarrett was talking about Republican Sarah Palin's book tour and the crowd she is drawing at the start of it - no small turnout, with some 1,500 people lining up early this morning for a chance to get into this evening's premier book-signing for Going Rogue in Grand Rapids.

"Sarah Palin continuing to draw huge crowds while she's promoting her brand new book,'' FOX's Jarrett told his viewers. "Take a look at -- these are some of the pictures just coming into us... The lines earlier had formed this morning.''

But it turns out that Happening Now had pulled some video of something that happened last year: Displaying video today from Palin's campaign for the vice presidency, on the ticket with the GOP's Sen. John McCain - which also drew considerable crowds, as shown today in video of a smiling Palin before an adoring campaign crowd.

"This was a production error in which the copy editor changed a script and didn't alert the control room to update the video,'' Michael Clemente, senior vice president of news at FOX, sad this evening. "There will be an on-air explanation during Happening Now on Thursday."

The unwelcome mishap follows soon on the heels of another FOX Pas - when the network's Sean Hannity ran video of a hugely attended TEA Party protest rally in Washington in September as Hannity was talking about a less-attended Nov. 4 rally outside the Capitol.

Comedy Central's Jon Stewart called out Hannity on that video, and Hannity apologized, on air, for what he called an "inadvertent'' error. Hannity has a book-tour interview of Palin on his show tonight, and we're betting Stewart's Daily Show crew will be watching.

So, as you might suspect, the No. 1-rated cable news network is taking today's mixing of videos quite seriously;

How seriously?

The Swamp hears tonight that it's highly like that serious disciplinary action will be taken for those responsible behind the scenes in the control room. News executives there consider this to have been a sloppy and unnecessary error.

New Thursday note: FOX made good on its promise to acknowledge the mistake and apologized for the mixup today: "We didn't mean to mislead anybody. It was a mistake, and for that we apologize.'' See it here:

President Barack Obama, with 20 nations in his passport this year, stepped on to the Great Wall of China this week.

"It gives you a perspective on a lot of day to day things that don't amount to much...It's majestic,'' the president said. "It reminds you of the sweep of history. And that our time here on earth is not that long. So we better make the best of it.''

The president has a lot on his mind these days.

The way Republican Sarah Palin tells it, all the president has to do is listen to his general about deployment of additional forces in Afghanistan, and that will take care of that decision -- sort of like Harry Truman, had he only listened to Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

Obama isn't too happy about the leaks that have come out from the many decision-making meetings that he has held about the deployment.

"I think I'm angrier than (Defense Secretary) Bob Gates about it," Obama told CBS News' Chip Reid, in one of the network news interviews that he conducted in China. "We have deliberations in the situation room for a reason; we're making life and death decisions that affect how our troops are able to operate in a theater of war. For people to be releasing info in the course of deliberations is not appropriate."

"A firing offense?" Reid inquired.

"Absolutely," Obama replied.

As for his own physical health, he suggested, he's holding up fine.

"My weight doesn't fluctuate too much,'' the president said. " It goes in a five-pound bandwidth. It has for the last 30 years. Um, skipping meals, that's usually just a scheduling issue, but I'm eating fine and I'm sleeping fine.

"My hair is getting grey, and it is the butt of a lot of jokes from my wife as well as my friends,'' he said. " You just don't have a comparable set of circumstances - with two wars, a financial crisis as bad as anything since 1933, a host of regional issues that have to be dealt with, a pandemic.

"You have a convergence of factors that have made this a difficult year not so much for me, but for the American people,'' he said. "And so, absolutely that weighs on me, because whenever I visit Walter Reed or other military hospitals, I see the sacrifice young people are making. That is a heavy weight. But it's an extraordinary privilege, as well, and I wouldn't trade my job for anything."

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Sarah Palin, author of Going Rogue, says the Army psychiatrist, a Muslim, accused of killing 13 and wounding 29 at Fort Hood, Texas, should have been "profiled'' before the shootings.

" I certainly do,'' Palin says in an interview that will air on FOX News' Hannity this evening, "and I think that there were massive warning flags that were missed all over the place, and I think that it was quite unfortunate that, to me, it was a fear of being politically incorrect to not -- I am going to use the word -- profile this guy, profile in the sense of finding out what his radical beliefs were.''

Palin, who is promoting her new memoir with a national book tour beginning in Grand Rapids this evening, tells FOX's Sean Hannity that her views about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, held in the shooting spree that shocked Fort Hood, the Army and a nation are likely to get liberal "heads.. spinning.''

"Now, because I used the word profile, I am going to get clobbered tomorrow morning,'' Palin says in the interview, her first with a cable TV news network, the leading one in this case. "The liberals, their heads are just going to be spinning. They're going to say she is radical, she is extreme.

""But I say profiling in the context of doing whatever we can to save innocent American lives, I'm all for it, then."

(Pictured above, a man waiting in line for the signing of Sarah Palin's new book at a bookstore in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Photo by Bill Pugliano / Getty Images)

"I want to help those worthy causes like special needs, making sure that our world is a more welcoming world for the most special ones,'' says the mother of five, whose youngest was born with Down syndrome. "Don't know if necessarily that means running for higher office, but you know, my life is in God's hands, and I'm seeking that path that he would have me on...

"You're going to hear a lot from me,'' Palin says. "So, you know, the haters are going to have a whole lot of material. Tina Fey, she may have a whole lot of material coming up."

She cannot offer any prediction about her plans for 2012 - "I wish that I could predict and - and prepare for what's going to happen in four years,'' she tells Hannity.

She says this about the campaign past - the worst moment was having her personal emails hacked "and then being broadcast around the world.. '' And her return to public life has had its choice moments as well, such as the Newsweek magazine cover picturing her in tights, a photo taken for Runner's World magazine - "It was just -- just another little shot,'' Palin says.

"But in the grand scheme of things, of course, things like that really don't amount to a hill of beans, when there are many things that are going wrong, something's going right, but something's going wrong in our country that people want to hear about and talk about...

"I think that the American people, they're tiring of the tabloidization of some people, like me. And they want to get to the issues,'' says Palin, who suggested in an interview with ABC that the Israelis should be allowed to continue expansion of settlements in Palestinian territories and that President Barack Obama should listen to what his generals are telling him to do in Afghanistan and that the president, as far as his economic policies are concerned, has things "backassward.''

"As a person, I think he's very charismatic, quite articulate,'' Palin says of Obama in her talk with Hannity. "Very, very talented as a politician.'' (Obama says he wishes her well, too, but "probably won't'' be reading that book of hers.) "I'd like to see him put all of those God-given talents that he's so full of to better use for America."

Asked if she believes, as FOX's own Glenn Beck has argued, that Obama is a radical, Palin says, "I will not hesitate to say that his associates have been extremely radical and we see that then in some of the appointments he has made."

Also, she finally has an answer for Katie Couric's famous campaign question of the vice presidential candidate about what sources of news she reads for information.

"I read Newsmax and the Frontiersman (the local newspaper in Wasilla, Ala., where Palin was mayor, which notes today that Palin's book tour has folks wondering if this is the start of a campaign) and Wall Street Journal and everything online,'' Palin says. "I absorb the news via many, many sources."

Sen. Robert C. Byrd's tenure as the longest-serving lawmaker in congressional history was marked today with praise but also questions about the senator's health.

"I look forward to serving you for the next 56 years and 320 days," the ninth-term Democratic senator from West Virginia said in a statement marking the occasion.

It was unknown if Byrd would be able to attend today's Senate session. The senator has been in and out of hospitals over the past several months.

Byrd, who arrived on Capitol Hill in January 1953 as a freshman member of the House, has spoken fondly of a time long past "when men ran for the Senate to be a senator. Not to become president, they ran to be a senator. And they loved the Senate.''

Byrd also has offered this advice to newcomers: "Do your work, do your work well, whatever committee you're assigned to, do your work with all your might and in time you will become on to be listened to.''

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) took to the floor this morning to praise Byrd's career.

"Friday is his 92nd birthday. And next week, Byrd writes in his weekly column, should be about Thanksgiving," Reid said. "What does he give thanks for this year? The privilege, he writes, of representing 'our great people in the United States Senate.''

Since June 12, 2006, Byrd has been the longest-serving senator. Later that year, he was elected to an unprecedented ninth term. Byrd has cast more than 18,000 votes and "despite fragile health that has kept him from the Senate floor during much of this year, has a nearly 98 percent attendance record over the course of his career," Reid noted.

Byrd's career has spanned 20,774 days. On Tuesday, Byrd tied the record set by Carl Hayden (D-Ariz.), who served in the House, then the Senate, from 1912 to 1969.

See some of Byrd's words above, and below the fold, courtesy of C-SPAN:

(Photo of Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) accompanied by longtime staffer Martha Anne McIntosh as he arrived on Capitol Hill on Aug. 6 by Susan Walsh / AP)

"I'm always enthralled by the Senate chamber itself. The walls themselves, if they could speak what would they tell us? What could they tell us?

"I think of the great men and women who have served there. Great men and women of my time. When I first came to the Senate there was Margaret J. Smith of Maine, one woman. And I think of, I think of Senator Richard Russell. I think of Senator... um... Norris Cotton. Senator George Aiken. Senator Mike Mansfield, Senator Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson. These men were there when I first came to the Senate.

"That was when men ran for the Senate to be a Senator. Not to become President, they ran to be a Senator. And they loved the Senate.

"That's the kind of men that were there when I came to the Senate. Of course it has a great history of great triumvirate of Senators: Webster, Calhoun, and Clay, and I would also add Thomas Benton of Missouri with others there, that's a great Senator. But that Senate is the forum where the people speak and where Senators can speak as long as their feet will hold them and if their feet won't hold them they can get unanimous consent to speak at their desk. That is the protection of the people's liberties. As long as there is a place where one can speak as loudly as he wishes and as long as his lungs will last, then we can be sure the people's liberties will endure...''

On advice for newcomers:

"I was a member of the House of Representatives when I first came to Congress in January of 1953... a member of the House of Representatives. Many times in the House of Representatives I would say, "Thank God for the United States Senate. Thank God for the Senate." I said that because in the Senate, a Senator is one man among ninety-six at the time I came here, then ninety-eight and a hundred as it is now, one man, he can speak at length. There is freedom of debate, freedom of speech in the Senate.

I remember in the House of Representatives I thought I had ten minutes at one point and when it finally came up to me I had one minute. That's not so in the Senate. And that's why I wanted to come to the Senate, and that's what I would say to a new member. I would say, "Senator, you are a member of a forum in which you can speak you mind as long as you wish. Now work hard in your committees. If you will be a workhorse in your committees, other Senators will listen to you. They will recognize you as someone who has done his homework, or her homework.

"So do your work, do your work well, whatever committee you're assigned to, do your work with all your might and in time you will become on to be listened to.''

Atty. Gen. Eric Holder today defended the Obama administration's decision to try professed terrorist mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in federal court and denied the move would give Mohammed a propaganda forum.

"At the end of the day, it was clear to me that the venue in which we are most likely to obtain justice for the American people is in federal court," Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning.

The decision to try some of the accused terrorists in civilian court rather than before military tribunals has been criticized by Republicans who argue that it gives terrorists a worldwide stage for their views. The argument is especially acute in the case of Mohammed, who has said he was the mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington in which almost 3,000 Americans were killed.

Mohammed and four others being held at the detention center in Guantanamo Bay will be tried in federal court in Manhattan, just blocks from where the World Trade Center's twin towers once stood.

Holder told senators that a civilian court was the proper place for the trial because the government had already successfully prosecuted more than 300 terrorists. Terrorists would have no more of a platform than they would have had in military proceedings.

"I have every confidence that the nation and the world will see him for the coward that he is," Holder said in televised remarks to the committee. "I'm not scared of what Khalid Sheik Mohammed has to say at trial -- and no one else needs to be either."

"We need not cower in the face of this enemy," Holder said. "Our institutions are strong, our infrastructure is sturdy, our resolve is firm, and our people are ready."

But the committee's ranking Republican, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, criticized the move. "I believe this decision is dangerous," Sessions said. "I believe it's misguided. I believe it's unnecessary."

Holder announced last week that five 9/11 conspirators will be tried in Manhattan. Five other suspects, Holder said, will be sent to unnamed military commissions in the United States.

President Barack Obama, who made closing of the U.S. military-run prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within one year a priority on Day One of his presidency, allows that January's deadline for closure of the controversial facility will come and go.

"We are on a path and a process where I would anticipate that Guantanamo will be closed next year,'' Obama said in an interview with FOX News Channel conducted in China. "I'm not going to set an exact date, because a lot of this is also going to depend upon cooperation from Congress..

"I'm not disappointed,'' Obama said. "I knew this was going to be hard, it's hard not only because of the politics, people I think understandably are fearful after a lot of years where they were told that Guantanamo was critical to keeping terrorists out.

"So, I understood that that had to be processed, but it's also just technically hard,'' the president told FOX News' Major Garrett, in an interview with a news network with which the Obama White House has been at odds lately - a talk which FOX plans to air on Special Report with Brett Baier this evening. "I just think as usual in Washington things move slower than I anticipated."

The president, sitting for a round of American television network interviews after a tour of Asia that carried him to China, also bore some evidence of the economic concerns that his Chinese hosts were voicing during talks with President Hu Jintao and others in Beijing:

Speaking of continuing economic troubles at home, the president said: "I think it is important, though, to recognize that if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the US economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession...''

"One of the trickiest things we're doing right now, is to on the one hand make sure the recovery is supported and not withdraw a lot of money either with tax increases or big spending ...at the same time, making sure that we're setting up a pathway long-term for deficit reduction,'' the president said. "It's about as hard of a play as there is..."

He said this, too, about a U.S. unemployment rate that has reached 10.2 percent, the highest in 25 years: "Nobody's been more disappointed than I have to see how high the unemployment rate has gotten. And, I spend every waking hour, when I'm talking to my economic team, about how we are going to put people back to work."

As people line up around the block in Grand Rapids for the debut of Sarah Palin's national book tour, the popular author will probably have to count one reader out:

President Barack Obama.

"Obviously, Sarah Palin has attracted a lot of attention,'' Obama said of the Republican former governor of Alaska and 2008 GOP nominee for vice president viewed by some as a strong candidate for president in 2012 -- though not among 70 percent of Americans surveyed, according to a couple of recent news polls.

"She is going to do very well with this book,'' the Democratic president said in an interview with CNN's Ed Henry conducted in China and aired today. "She obviously has a big constituency in the Republican Party, there are a lot of people excited about her.''

Suggesting that he, himself, has not even given any thought to 2012 yet, the president said, "I do think it says a lot about our political process that 10 months after (the last election) we're already talking about it.'' (The timing of network interviews this week didn't afford Obama an opportunity to personally comment, however, on Palin's suggestion that he has everything "backassward'' on the economy.)

But, citing a load of policy briefing books that he has been reading lately, the presdent said he "probably won't'' be reading Palin's memoir, Going Rogue.

"I probably will not'' read the book, the president said in an interview with FOX News that the leading cable news network has been seeking for some time.

In the interviews with American broadcasters covering his trip through Asia, FOX's Major Garrett asked Obama about Palin's book, in a talk that FOX News Channel will air on Special Report with Brett Baier this evening.

"But I wish her well, you know,'' Obama said of Palin. "It looks like she's going to do very well without my readership."

President Barack Obama, "very close'' to a decision about deploying troops in Afghanistan - a strategy that must provide for an "endgame'' as well as a way forward - maintains that he is "absolutely confident'' about getting a health-care bill, calls the planned trial of 9/11 plotters in New York criminal court perfectly suitable and says he hasn't begun to even think about running in 2012 yet.

But he acknowledges the "political turbulence'' and the toll that "taking on things that are unpopular'' could take on his own prospects for reelection.

"if I feel like I've made the very best decisions for the American people and three years from now I look at it, and my, you know, poll numbers are in the tank because we've gone through these wrenching changes, you know, politically I'm in a tough spot, I'll feel all right about myself,'' he said. "I'd feel a lot worse, if at a time of such urgency for the American people I was spending a lot of time thinking about how I could position myself to ensure reelection.

"Because if I were doing that right now, I wouldn't have taken on health care, I wouldn't be taking on things that are unpopular,'' the president said. "I wouldn't be closing Guantanamo. There are a whole series of choices that I'm making that I know are going to create some political turbulence. But I think they're the right thing to do, and history will bear out my theories or not.''

The president said all this in an interview with CNN conducted in China as part of a round robin of interviews with cable news networks - CNN and FOX News alike - and the broadcast networks.

"We are very close to a decision,'' Obama said of his prolonged deliberation over deploying additional troops to Afghanistan. " I will announce that decision certainly in the next several weeks... ''

The president is weighing several considerations:

"We do have a vital interest in making sure that al Qaeda cannot attack us and that they can't use Afghanistan as a safe haven,'' he said. " We have a vital interest in making sure that Afghanistan is sufficiently stable that they can't infect the entire region with violent extremism...

"I am very confident that when I announce the decision, the American people will have a lot of clarity about what we're doing, how we're going to succeed, how much this thing is going to cost, what kind of burden does this places on our young men and women in uniform, '' the president said, "and most importantly, what's the end game on this thing, which is something that, unless you impose that kind of discipline, could lead to a multi-year occupation.''

After more than eight years of war in Afghanistan, Obama was asked if he wants to see American troops come home from Afghanistan before the end of his presidency. "My preference would be not to hand off anything to the next president,'' he said. " One of the things I'd like is the next president to be able to come in and say, 'I've got a clean slate...'

The president maintained that Att'y Gen. Eric Holder had made the call about trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and several accomplices held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, accused in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in criminal court in New York, but allowed that he will be held accountable for it.

"I said to the attorney general, 'Make a decision based on the law,''' said Obama, noting that military commissions have been improved and are available for trial. "But I also have great confidence in our Article III courts, the courts that have tried hundreds of terrorist suspects who are imprisoned right now in the United States... This notion that somehow we have to be fearful that these terrorists possess some special powers that prevent us from presenting evidence against them, locking them up, and exact swift justice, I think that has been a fundamental mistake.''

But if something goes wrong, he allowed, he will be the one responsible for the decision.

"I always have to take responsibility,'' Obama said. "That's my job.''

"LBJ didn't have the Congressional Budget Office,'' Obama said, noting that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has been ready with a Senate bill for weeks. "It has taken this long for the Congressional Budget Office to present its best estimates of how much this is going to cost, how many savings will be obtained...

"I remain confident that we are going to get this done, and we are going to have a bill that reduces our deficit, bends the cost curve, covers millions of people who don't have health insurance right now and for people who do have health insurance makes their insurance more secure,'' the president said. " I am absolutely confident we are going to get that done.''

The president acknowledges public frustration with the pace of the economic recovery at home.

"The American people have gone through a very tough year,'' he said, "and my job, as president, is to help navigate through this tough year. People who don't have a job right now, people who have lost their home, I'd be mad, too, and they expect me to do something about it....''

At the close of the president's current foreign trip, which will take him from China to South Korea, he will have visited 20 nations, CNN's Henry noted, the most of any president during his first year.

"No. 1, I think that we've restored America's standing in the world,'' Obama said, citing polls about public confidence in the United States around the world.

"We've seen very specific areas of cooperation around the nuclear issue,'' he said. "At the time of my inauguration, the world community was still divided on what Iran's intentions were... We mobilized the international community... You now have validators like the International Atomic Energy Agency, you've got the P-5 plus one, which includes Russia and China, all saying to Iran, you're on the wrong side of history here.''

"There is no doubt that, in the same way that on domestic policy our first job was to stabilize the situation and prevent disaster, on the international stage our first job was to stabilize the situation to allow us to move forward,. A lot of our initiatives have not borne fruit... The question is, are we moving in the right direction. There is no doubt we are.''

Obama was asked if he will be a candidate for reelection in 2012.

"I don't think about 2012 right now,'' the Democrat said. "I think about next week...
"I said to myself very early on, when I started running for office, that I don't want to be making decisions based on getting reelected, because I think the challenges that America faces right now are so significant,'' he said. "Obviously if I make good decisions, and I think that I'm moving the country on the right direction economically, in terms of our security interests, our foreign policy, I'd like to think that those policies are going to be continued, because they are not going to bear fruit in just four years.''

He also was asked about Republican Sarah Palin, the Republican nominee for vice president last year who has embarked on a book tour this week with her new memoir, Going Rogue.

The president acknowledged he "probably won't'' read the book, suggesting that he is immersed in a lot of policy briefing books lately.

"Obviously Sarah Palin has attracted a lot of attention,'' Obama said. "She is going to do very well with this book.... She obviously has a big constituency in the Republican Party, there are a lot of people excited about her. I do think it says a lot about our political process that ten months after we're already talking about it.

A lot of questions have been posed in the health-care debate, with a lot of nuance: Americans have been asked if they approve of the president's handling of the issue, or congressional handling of the issue, if they think reform will make things better, make things worse, more costly or less costly.

But, as the Senate attempts to take a health-care bill to the floor as a test of the ability to began debate later this week, here's a simple question:

"Now thinking specifically about the health insurance plans available to most Americans, would you favor or oppose creating a public health insurance option administered by the federal government that would compete with plans offered by private health insurance companies?''

Fifty-six percent said yes to the "public option'' in the Nov. 13-15 survey conducted by CNN and Opinion Research Corp. That's the same number that CNN found at the end of August, as the public option was becoming the most controversial aspsect of the legislation.

Now that the House has narrowly (220-215) approved a health-care bill with a public option, and Senate leaders are advancing one with an option for a public option that states could opt-out from if they wanted, two-thirds of those surveyed say they oppose allowing states to prevent people from taking part in a public option if the government has one.

The survey of 1,014 adults, including 928 registered voters, carries a possible margin or error of plus or mnus 3 percentage points.

The Gallup Poll recently found softer support for a public option: 50 percent.

Sarah Palin, embarking on a natonal book tour with her Going Rogue memoirs, has one word for the way that President Barack Obama is handling the economy:

"Backassward.''

That's how the former governor of Alaska and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee put it during a series of talks that Palin had with ABC News' Barbara Walters, in a segment that aired this evening on World News.

""I would start cutting taxes and allowing our small businesses to keep more of what they are earning, more of what they are producing, more of what they own and earn so that they could start reinvesting in their businesses and expand and hire more people," Palin told Walters. "Not punishing them by forcing health care reform down their throats; by forcing an energy policy down their throats that ultimately will tax them more and cost them more to stay in business. Those are backassward ways of trying to fix the economy."

"You do have a way with words," Walters noted.

"I call it like I see it," she said.

Palin also embraced the word that former Vice President Dick Cheneyhad for what Obama is doing with the decision about troop deployments in Afghanistan:

"Dithering.''

"To listen to (Gen. Stanley) McChrystal, to listen to the appointee that President Obama asked for the advice from," Palin explained, "McChrystal gave the president the advice and said, 'We need essentially a surge strategy in Afghanistan, so that we can win in Afghanistan.'

"And that means more resources, more troops there,''' she said. "It frustrates me and frightens me -- and many Americans -- that President Obama is dithering around with the decision in Afghanistan." (The candidate at the top of the GOP's ticket in 2008, Sen. John McCain, has said he is "past angry'' about the delay of an Afghanistan strategy.)

But Palin hasn't followed the charted course of the past Bush-Cheney administration and its national security advisers very closely, or for that matter that of the Obama administration, when it comes to the ongoing crisis in the Middle East.

"I disagree with the Obama administration on that," Palin told Walters in the interview aired tonight. "I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is, is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don't think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand."

Palin also still maintains that she has a unique perspective on Russian relations from her vantage point in Wasilla.

Palin had told the host of this evening's news, ABC's Charles Gibson, in one of her premier campaign interviews back in September 2008 that Alaska's strategic location was part of her foreign policy portfolio: "They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.''

Palin had taken some heat for that in Tina Fey's Emmy-winning portrayal of Palin on Saturday Night Live. But Palin told Walters that she had never suggested that she could see Russia from her house, but her state's position is "very significant....

"We are a gatekeeper for the continent. So for national security reasons, and for energy independence and resource development reasons, Alaska should be recognized for its strategic location on the globe.''