[ Obama, the first sitting US president to appear on “The View” ]
President Obama appears on the ABC daytime television talk show, "The View" in New York, alongside hosts (L-R) Whoopi Goldberg, Barbara Walters, Joy Behar, Sherri Shepherd and Elisabeth Hasselbeck. (Saul Loeb/Getty Images)
Being the first sitting president to ever partake in a daytime talk show, Obama and the ladies talked about the tough criticism he has received for the past few weeks—the money that has been spent to stimulate the economy, Congress’s vote to spend another $59 billion on the war in Afghanistan, his wife and children, his early life racial identity crisis, songs in his iPod, and his plan to not attend Chelsea Clinton’s wedding.
Obama said in the hour-long pre-taped interview that he wanted to come to a show that first lady Michelle Obama watches.
“I was trying to find a show that Michelle actually watched, and so I thought this is it, right here. All those new shows, she's like, eh, let me get the clicker,” said the president, adding that he has watched the program himself as well. He was interviewed by American broadcast journalist Barbara Walters and four other co-hosts.
As a family tradition, Obama and his wife and daughters play a game called Roses and Thorns, where everyone takes a turn to describe good things that happened—roses, and difficult things that happened—thorns.
For the president, the past month’s rose has been the trip his family and he took up to Maine.
“We went on bike rides and hikes, and the girls are getting old enough now where they're not quite teenagers yet, so they still like you, but they are full of opinions and ideas and observations, and it's just a great age,” said Obama. Malia just turned 12 and Sasha is 9 years old.
As for thorns, Obama said that since he took the job, the country has gone into economic depression, leading to hundreds of thousands of job losses monthly.
“So the last 20 months has been a non-stop effort to restart the economy, to stabilize the financial system, to make sure that we're creating jobs again instead of losing them, and in the midst of all that, we've also had the oil spill, we've also had two wars, we've also had a pandemic, H1N1, that we had to manage and a whole host of other issues,” he said.
The president added that after all the thorns, the economy is starting to stabilize and grow again. As he reads letters from his citizens every night, he said that he is happy Americans are optimistic about the country.
As Chelsea Clinton’s wedding approaches this Saturday, Obama revealed that he didn’t make it on the guest list.
He said he was not invited, as former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wanted the event to be simply about their daughter and her future husband.
"It would be tough enough having one president at a wedding, you don't want two presidents at a wedding,” he said.
