Obama: Something wrong with politics

Associated Press

HOLLAND, Mich.

Aligning himself with a public fed up with economic uncertainty and Washington gridlock, President Barack Obama declared Thursday: “There is nothing wrong with our country. There is something wrong with our politics.”

His toughly worded message — he said there was frustration in his voice, in case anyone missed the point — came amid a series of polls showing that people are disgusted with political dysfunction and are dispensing blame all around, including on Obama.

Obama aired his frustration with the ways of Washington just before pivoting to his re-election campaign and a pair of big-money fundraisers in New York City.

The president’s quick stop in Holland, Mich., was his first official trip outside of Washington after he spent more than a month in the nation’s capital dealing with the debt debate. Obama said Americans were right to be worried about the country’s 9.1 percent unemployment rate and fluctuations in the stock market. The contentious and partisan debt debate in Washington this summer, he said, has done little to help.

“Unfortunately, what we’ve seen in Washington in the last few months has been the worst kind of partisanship, the worst kind of gridlock, and that gridlock has undermined public confidence and impeded our efforts to take the steps we need for our economy,” Obama said after touring a factory that makes advanced batteries for alternative-fuel vehicles.

A Washington Post poll released this week showed widespread and deep discontent with Washington. Nearly 80 percent said they were dissatisfied with the way the country’s political system works, compared with 60 percent in November 2009. Seventy-one percent said the federal government is mostly focused on the wrong things, up from 55 percent in October 2010.

Both Obama and congressional Republicans were targets of unhappiness, with only 19 percent of people polled saying that Obama had made progress in solving the country’s major problems, and just 10 percent saying that about Republicans. At the same time, 28 percent said Obama had made things worse, while 35 percent said congressional Republicans had done that.