Axelrod: I Regret Using Obama as an ‘Announcer for the Government’

“We were a triage unit when we arrived in the White House, and I describe this in the book. We were told that there was a one in three chance of a second Great Depression. Every day we were taking the vital signs of the U.S. economy, hoping that we could keep it pumping. And we had to take a series of steps, the president did, that were as unpopular as they were necessary. And that distracted from our ability to deliver the kind of message we wanted. I regret that we used him too much as kind of an announcer for the government instead of the narrator of a larger theme. That was a mistake that I take some responsibility for.”