Obama draws contrast with Romney in Rolling Stone
WASHINGTON— Mitt Romney can’t disavow the conservative views he embraced as a candidate during the Republican presidential primaries, President Barack Obama says in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine that, when it hits newsstands Friday, will complete a week of outreach to young voters.
Obama covered a range of topics in the Rolling Stone interview, from his relations with the Pentagon to his reflections on race to his two acclaimed though abbreviated moments of public singing.
Analyzing the election campaign ahead of him, Obama avoided characterizing Romney as a flip-flopper, a common criticism Romney faced during the Republican primary contests, and instead tagged him as a candidate who willfully embraces the Republican Party’s most conservative views.
“I don’t think that their nominee is going to be able to suddenly say, ‘Everything I’ve said for the last six months, I didn’t mean,’ ” Obama said. “I’m assuming that he meant it. When you’re running for president, people are paying attention to what you’re saying.”
Obama’s answer underscores an approach that his advisers have been emphasizing lately, casting the race as one of sharp contrasts between two distinct candidates, parties and ideologies.
He said his own political burden is describing to Americans the progress that has occurred during his administration and how, if sustained, it could lead to economic security. “There’s understandable skepticism,” he said, “because things are still tough out there.”
Discussing his relationship with the military, Obama said, in the clearest terms yet, that he had to rein in the Pentagon as he sought to close down the war in Iraq on schedule and refocus the military effort in Afghanistan. “It wasn’t as fast as some people would have liked,” he said. “It was probably faster than some folks in the Pentagon would have liked.”
On Tuesday, Obama pitched cheaper student loans at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at the University of Colorado at Boulder and taped an appearance on NBC’S “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.” He’s slated to speak at the University of Iowa Wednesday.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of the Rolling Stone interview ahead of publication.