Washington:
US President, Barack Obama, on Tuesday said he would prefer a good one-term of his presidency rather than a mediocre two-term.
"I would say that the one thing I'm clear about is that I'd rather be a really good one-term President, than a mediocre two-term President," Obama told the ABC news channel in an interview. Under the US constitution a president is allowed maximum two-terms, totally eight years.
"There is a tendency in Washington to think that our job description of elected officials is to get re-elected. That's not our job description. When your poll numbers drop, you're an idiot. When you poll numbers are high, you're a genius," Obama said.
"If my poll numbers are low, then I'm cool and cerebral and cold and detached. If my poll numbers are high, well, he's calm and reasoned," he said in response to a question.
"One thing that I think people in this town forget is that the kind of political setbacks that we experience, they're nothing compared to the setbacks that, you know, a guy who loses his job is going through. And he's sending out 100 resumes," he said.
"They get up every day. They go out for that next interview and they keep on interviewing until they find a job. Those are the people who inspire me," Obama said.
Referring to his Wednesday's State of the Union Address, Obama said he would be focusing on job growth. "We're going to talk about how we can, first of all, focus on job creation and growth."
And I've met with the Republicans, by the way, several weeks ago, and so I have their ideas. I know what they're proposing. And some of the things we propose are things that actually should get some strong bipartisan support," he said.
"We have stopped the economic contraction. The economy is growing again. And we did create or save several million jobs. That's not my opinion. That's the opinion of conservative economists, as well as liberal economists," he said.
"But we've still lost 7 million jobs. And so, you know, I understand why the American people, their attitude is not, "it could have been worse." Their attitude is, "how do we make sure that we keep on getting it better?" And that's what we'll be talking about on Wednesday," Obama said.