Exclusive: Obama on Iowa, Clinton, Sanders and 2016 [View all]

[sufrommich]

In a candid 40-minute interview for POLITICO’s Off Message podcast as the first flakes of the blizzard fell outside the Oval Office, he couldn’t hide his obvious affection for Clinton or his implicit feeling that she, not Sanders, best understands the unpalatably pragmatic demands of a presidency he likens to the world’s most challenging walk-and-chew-gum exercise.

“[The] one thing everybody understands is that this job right here, you don’t have the luxury of just focusing on one thing,” a relaxed and reflective Obama told me in his most expansive discussion of the 2016 race to date.....


When I asked Obama if Clinton is facing “unfair scrutiny” this time around, his answer was a clipped “yes” – and he even admitted a tinge of regret that his own campaign had been so hard on her eight years ago.

But when I asked him if Sanders reminded him of himself in 2008, he quickly shot me down: “I don’t think that's true.”


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/obama-iowa-2016-sanders-off-message-218166#ixzz3yG0GfiVx