US President Barack Obama admitted Wednesday he was "too polite" in his debate with Mitt Romney, but predicted Democratic "hand wringing" would soon subside over his limp performance. Obama, in his broadest comments yet on a debate that apparently turned the White House race towards Mitt Romney, told rattled supporters to focus and promised victory on November 6, with the words "I got this."
"At the debate, I think it is fair to say, I was too polite," Obama said of a performance that was widely panned as listless and lacking passion. "It is hard to sometimes keep on saying, 'What you're saying isn't true,' it gets repetitive. The good news is, that it's just the first one," Obama said in an interview on the Tom Joyner Radio Show.
"I think it is fair to say we will see a little more activity at the next one," Obama said on the show, which has a large following among African Americans. "We have got four weeks left in the election and we are going to take it to them," Obama said, before going on to reassure supporters, who Joyner said were "scared to death" after Romney's polling surge after the debate.
He argued that the race was always going to be tight. The damage control effort came as the impact of last week's debate in Denver reverberated through a race in which Romney now leads national polls. "Governor Romney kept on making mistakes, month after month, so it made it look artificially that it would end up being a cakewalk.
"We understood internally that it never would be, that it was going to tighten. It tightened over the last three or four days, but it could have tightened after the convention if they (Republicans) had not had such a bad convention." "This is a long haul. It is very important for folks, that they understand as long as folks stay focused, we will win this thing."
Obama predicted that his vice president Joe Biden would do a "terrific" job in Thursday night's debate clash with Republican vice presidential nominee and seemed stoked up for his next debate with Romney on Tuesday. "By next week I think a lot of the handwringing will be complete because we are going to go ahead and win this thing," Obama said, arguing that many of his supporters had repeatedly doubted he would actually triumph in 2008.
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