Obama: Voters to decide who caused 'this mess'

[July 16, 2010]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama acknowledges that the fall elections could amount to a referendum on his stewardship of the nation's affairs.

Obama tells NBC in an interview that "nobody in the White House is satisfied" with continuing high unemployment.

But he also says the midterm congressional elections could come down to "a choice between the policies that got us into this mess and my policies that got us out of this mess."

The president said in the interview he believes voters "are going to say the policies that got us into this mess, we can't go back to." He also said Washington "has spent an inordinate amount of time on politics -- who's up and who's down -- and not enough on what we're doing for the American people."

[Associated Press]

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