THE TELEGRAPH: President Barack Obama has admitted he failed to unite Americans and change the way Washington works during his first year in office.
With his approval ratings falling below 50 per cent, Mr Obama confessed his disappointment at not delivering key pledges of his campaign.
"What I haven't been able to do in the midst of this crisis is bring the country together in a way that we had done in the inauguration," he told People magazine. "That's what's been lost this year ... that whole sense of changing how Washington works."
Mr Obama, who will mark a year in office next Wednesday, came to power amid a surge of optimism that he could unify Democrats and Republicans at a time of national distress, and reverse the bitter polarity of the George W Bush era.
Instead, there has been little collaboration between the parties in Congress while floating voters who turned out en masse for Mr Obama have deserted him in opinion polls. His approval ratings have tumbled down from the mid-to-high 60s when he took over.
In a Quinnipiac University poll, there was even a narrow margin among respondents of 35 to 37 per cent on whether the United States would have been better off had Obama's Republican opponent John McCain won the 2008 election. Barack Obama admits failure to unite the US >>> Alex Spillius in Washington | Thursday, January 14, 2010
