rating calling the country better off and 15% saying it is worse off. in a series of exit interviews with jonathan alter from the new york times magazine, vice president joe biden not only looks back on his previous eight years in the white house, but also to what his future has in store. reflecting on his decision not to run for president, biden says he still questions his decision and believes he could have won had he run. biden whose son beau died in 2014 said, quote, i don t know what i d do if i was in a debate and someone said, you re doing this because of your son. i might have a walked over and kicked his ass. biden also regrets not going with a different message while campaigning for hillary saying he wished to hell he repeated the message from his dnc speech instead of attacking donald trump s lack of qualifications. on the president-elect, biden said he reminded him of the bull d lys that teased him growing up due to his stutter. the question i get is, is
not to underestimate the president elect. cnn s athena jones live at the white house with more. reporter: the president s long good-byes coming to an end in just a few more days. he spent the last several weeks making a series of last minute policy moves and last week here at the white house in a surprise ceremony he awarded the vice president the medal of freedom with distinction. he s also been giving a series of exit interviews highlighting his record, everything from passing the now endangered affordable care act to killing osama bin laden, and last night on 60 minutes he talked about an area of remaining concern when it comes to foreign policy, specifically u.s. dealings with russia in the wake of findings by the intelligence community that they tried to meddle in the presidential campaign. take a listen to what he had to say. i have been concerned about the degree to which in some circles you ve seen people suggest that vladimir putin has
and his wife have been giving a lot of exit interviews as their final days in the house behind me wind down. in an interview with 60 minutes set to air on sunday, the president was reflecting on his time in office. he says he and his team have not always been good at communicating the good things about his policy proposals. let s play some of that. part of the job description is also shaping public opinion. and we were very effective, and i was very effective, in shaping public opinion around my campaigns. but there were big stretches while governing where even though we were doing the right thing, we weren t able to mobilize public opinion firmly enough behind us to weaken the resolve of the republicans to stop opposing us or to cooperate with us.
and the president has given mcconnell a little bit credit for that as he s started to do this series of exit interviews. that set the stage for how this health care fight played out in 2009. the president at the time had democrats in control of the house. a majority of 60 votes. a super majority of 60 votes in the senate that let him pass whatever essentially legislation he wanted to. and what he chose to spend his political capital on was this health care law. eight years later, a lot of democrats have paid a price for it. a health care system that s dramatically different. 20 million people who now have health insurance that didn t before. there have been people who have suffered from it. higher deductibles. higher premiums. clearly the law itself is unpopular but a lot of people who are benefiting from it don t necessarily know that some of the benefits they are receiving are as a result of the law. there s a lot of complicated pieces to this. so we re hearing the president is takin
david axelrod was the guy doing the interview. he was the guy who was the architect of those obama campaigns. what do you make of the argument the president is making there? he says, hey, with i would have won this election if i would have been running. no, he actually said, i think i could have. one of the problems that president obama has had throughout his eight years is that he has a tendency, when asked questions, hypothetical questions, he sort of responds at a remove and starts to take on the role that i am presuming right now that you take on from time to time, that is a commentator, an analyst, a pundit, and looking at his own administration, from a remove and talking about what could happen, wh might happen, what he thinks ought to happen, and the other thing is, we have to keep in mind that the president is giving all of giving not many, but a few exit interviews, where he gets to really does get a chance to take a step back and talk about things, what he got right, wh