Obama GOP Wanted To Take Me Down

The delegates for the Republican presidential nomination will start being distributed at the Iowa caucuses in just a few weeks, but President Obama says he's not concerned with who he'll have to face next November.


"It doesn't really matter who the nominee is gonna be," the president said on CBS' "60 Minutes," in an interview that aired Sunday evening. "The core philosophy that they're expressing is the same. And the contrast in visions between where I want to take the country and what-- where they say they want to take the country is gonna be stark."


He added that "the American people are gonna have a good choice and it's gonna be a good debate."


Mr. Obama gave a general assessment of the two frontrunners, calling former House Speaker Newt Gingrich "somebody who's been around a long time, and is good on TV, is good in debates."


Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, meanwhile, "has shown himself to be somebody who's good at politics, as well," the president said. "He's had a lot of practice at it."


While there is no GOP nominee yet, Mr. Obama doesn't believe he's being judged by his own performance, he told "60 Minutes" host Steve Kroft.


Speaking with 60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft in an interview that aired Sunday night, the president said Republicans chose to stand on the sidelines while the economy worsened so that they could capitalize on blaming him.


“When I came into office in 2008, it was my firm belief that at such an important moment in our history, there was no reason why Democrats and Republicans couldn’t put some of the old ideological baggage aside and focus on common sense, what works, practical solutions to the tough problems we were facing,” Obama told “60 Minutes”.