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“People have a right to be grouchy,” Obama adviser David Axelrod said on CNN’s State of the Union when asked about Obama’s sagging approval rating, which is now just below 50 percent.

“There’s ten percent unemployment,” the top presidential adviser also pointed out. “These are tough times.”

“We took over in January in the midst of an unprecedented economic crisis, fiscal crisis, financial crisis, two wars,” Obama also told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King. “The president has had to make a lot of tough decisions to try and rescue our economy from collapse, to move this country forward and we are going to reap the benefits of that.”

Although Axelrod acknowledged that Obama’s approval ratings had fallen considerably during his first year in office, Axelrod also said that the White House was not focused on polling data.
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David Axelrod spoke out Sunday about the non-binding agreement that five countries, including the United States, agreed to at the Copenhagen climate talks.

Washington (CNN) – A top White House adviser said Sunday that the limited, non-binding agreement between the administration and four other countries was a step in the right direction in the battle to control climate change that lays the groundwork for more independent efforts by the United States.

“Nobody says that this is the end of the road,” Obama adviser David Axelrod said Sunday of the agreement which calls on countries to identify their own voluntary commitments to reducing climate change so that compliance can be internationally monitored.

“The end of the road would’ve been the complete collapse of those talks [in Copenhagen],” Axelrod added. “This is a great step forward,” he said of the limited agreement reached just as the 12-day meeting in Copenhagen was ending in what many observers predicted would be failure.

Related: Climate change deal reached, U.N. Chief says

Axelrod pointed out that as part of the agreement China and India have set goals for combating climate change. “We’re going to be able to review what they’re doing. We’re going to be able to challenge them if they don’t meet those goals,” Axelrod told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King.
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Washington (CNN) - President Barack Obama thinks a Senate proposal to tax insurance companies that provide high-cost "Cadillac" health care coverage has merit, his senior adviser said Sunday.

In an interview on CNN's "State of the Union," Obama aide David Axelrod provided few details but offered some insight into how the president views aspects of emerging health care reform legislation.

“I think there’s a will to get this done,” Axelrod said of the end game of a national debate that has roiled for months. “People understand we’re on the doorstep of doing something really historic.

The House has passed its version of the bill, and Senate Democrats prepared to brave the aftermath of a blizzard Sunday in their push to pass their health care measure before Christmas. If the Senate passes a bill, the two versions would be merged into a final measure requiring approval from both chambers before going to Obama to be signed into law.

While the House and Senate bills agree on most issues, there are significant differences over how to pay for them and how they will expand health coverage to more than 30 million Americans currently uninsured.
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David Axelrod tells CNN that he'll borrow a copy of former Gov. Palin's new book.

(CNN) – “Going Rogue,” the forthcoming memoir of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin may already be a bestseller but the former Republican vice presidential nominee won’t be getting a royalty from one Democratic politico.

Instead of purchasing his own, Obama adviser David Axelrod tells CNN he will borrow the much anticipated book from another veteran of the Obama campaign.

“I think I’ll borrow [former Obama campaign manager David] Plouffe’s copy,” Axelrod said in an interview that aired Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, “I don’t see why we both have to buy one.

“Once he’s done with it maybe he can summarize it for me or lend it to me and I’ll give it a look.”
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In a pre-taped interview for Sunday’s :“State of the Union” program on CNN, Obama senior advisor David Axelrod fired back at criticism by Romney that the president was taking too long to decide on whether to send more troops to Afghanistan.

“I know that Gov. Romney has never had responsibility for any decision akin to this, so he just may not be familiar with all that it entails,” Axelrod said of the former Massachusetts governor.

Obama held his eighth meeting with his war council of senior Cabinet and Pentagon officials last week to further consider a request by his commanding general in Afghanistan to send up to 40,000 more troops to bolster the 68,000 already committed.

Axelrod called the deliberation process, which has lasted more than two months, a necessity when considering the lives of American troops involved and the enormous investment by the United States.
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(CNN) – As Democrats on Capitol Hill are trying to avoid a brewing intra-party battle over treatment of abortion in health care reform legislation, a top presidential adviser is reiterating that President Obama remains opposed to legislation that contains language preferred by more conservative Democrats in Congress.

In an effort ensure passage of the health care reform bill in the House, last week Speaker Nancy Pelosi permitted a group of approximately 40 anti-abortion Democrats to present an amendment that prohibits any insurance plan offered on a new health insurance exchange from offering coverage for abortion. The amendment is named after one of its sponsors, Bart Stupak of Michigan.

After the Stupak amendment passed with an assist from many House Republicans, more progressive, pro-abortion rights Democrats in the House and the Senate began organizing in an effort to eliminate the provision from the final version of the bill that will be voted on by both chambers and presented to President Obama for his signature. Abortion rights advocates regard the Stupak amendment as changing the status quo, a longstanding compromise between the two sides in the abortion debate. The compromise is best expressed through the Hyde amendment, a rider to an annual spending bill. The amendment, which is renewed every year, prohibits the use of federal funds to pay for abortion and has, for many years, prohibited the federal government from paying for abortions as part of the Medicaid program. But abortion rights activists say the Stupak amendment goes further, effectively prohibiting even individuals who are using their own money to buy coverage on the exchange from obtaining coverage for abortion.

In an interview that aired Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, Obama adviser David Axelrod reiterated the president’s position on how abortion should be handled in the debate over health care reform.

“The president has said repeatedly, and he said in his speech to Congress, that he doesn’t believe that this bill should change the status quo as it relates to the issue of abortion,” Axelrod told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King. “He’s going to work with the Senate and the House to try to ensure that at the end of the day the status quo is not changed.”

Asked specifically whether the Stupak amendment changed the status quo, Axelrod replied “I think it’s fair to say the bill Congress passed does change the status quo. But I believe there are discussions ongoing as to how to change it accordingly.”

King asked Axelrod whether the president would sign a final health care bill that contains the Stupak amendment. Likening it to Obama’s position on the public health insurance, Axelrod said Obama “believes both these issues and can and will be worked through before [the final bill] reaches his desk.”

A top adviser to the president said the administration is 'making good progress' towards closing Guantanamo detention facility.

(CNN) – With the clock ticking down to the Obama administration’s self-imposed deadline for closing the U.S. military detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, senior Obama adviser David Axelrod said the White House believes it will come close to the original deadline but may not exactly make the one-year deadline.

Announcing on January 22 of this year that “Guantanamo will be closed no later than one year from now,” Obama himself committed the new administration to closing the controversial facility by late January 2010. Since then, the administration has confronted complex legal issues over what to do with the approximately 200 terror suspects still detained at Guantanamo, which has made the deadline increasingly unattainable.

But, in an interview that aired Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, Axelrod said the administration will come close.

“We believe we’re going to substantially meet the deadline,” Axelrod told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King, “We may not hit it on the date but we will close Guantanamo and we’re making good progress toward doing it.”
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David Axelrod said the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia were 'impacted by state issues.'

(CNN) – Top White House aide David Axelrod brushed off Democratic electoral losses in Virginia and New Jersey Wednesday, calling the congressional race in New York's 23rd district the "only national race of consequence."

Axelrod told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey were "impacted by state issues" and that they were not national races. He said the results of those races should not intimidate moderate Democrats, who he said should focus instead on the election in upstate New York, where a Democrat won the seat for the first time in over 100 years.

"That's the race that most members of Congress are going to look at with interest, and that's the race they should," Axelrod said. "Because the message was, if you embrace the president's agenda… then you will do well and you'll energize voters and you'll get the kind of turnout you need to win your race."

Many Republicans have called the race in NY-23 a unique situation - since the local GOP appointed the nominee instead of conducting a primary, which they say Hoffman would have won - Axelrod called the chaotic contest evidence of an intra-party split.

"What you saw there was I think the future, or the near-term future of the Republican Party, civil war in which the right wing ran the moderates out of the party," Axelrod said. "And they ran right to the Democratic candidate. And I think that has some harbingers for what's to come."

Tune into The Situation Room beginning at 4 pm ET for the rest of Wolf Blitzer's interview with Axelrod.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel spoke out Sunday against the efforts of some Wall Street firms to lobby against proposed new financial regulations.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - Wall Street needs to focus more on helping Main Street than self-enrichment, two of President Barack Obama's top advisers said Sunday.

Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Senior Adviser David Axelrod said Wall Street institutions that received taxpayer-funded bailouts should stop fighting proposed new financial regulations intended to prevent another near economic meltdown.

They also said firms should re-think paying large new bonuses now that fortunes have recovered, and Axelrod called for banks that got government help to increase lending to support economic growth.

The comments came after JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs last week reported strong earnings and likely lucrative bonus payments within a year of receiving government help. Both organizations have repaid the government and no longer are governed by regulations linked to the taxpayer money.

Emanuel and Axelrod, without naming names, criticized beneficiaries of government help for now opposing reforms that would prevent a recurrence of the problem.
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WASHINGTON (CNN) - Compromise is coming on a health care reform bill, President Barack Obama's senior adviser said Sunday.

Speaking on the ABC program "This Week," David Axelrod dodged direct questions about whether Obama would sign a bill without a government-run public insurance option.

He noted that the five proposals passed so far by House and Senate committees would eventually be melded into one through further negotiations and debate.

"I believe that there is a fundamental belief on the Hill at this time that we can't fail now," Axelrod said. He added that he thinks that determination "will overcome these differences. … There will be compromise."
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(CNN) – Top White House aide David Axelrod is blaming the city of Chicago's shocking early elimination to host the 2016 Olympics on internal politics within the International Olympic Committee.

"I don't view this as a repudiation of the president or the first lady," Axelrod told CNN. "I think that there are politics everywhere, and there are politics inside that room."

Axelrod's comments came shortly after the IOC announced Chicago was the first city of the four finalists to be eliminated from contention. The early elimination came after in-person appeals from both Obamas on behalf of the city.

"As with any process like this, there are all kinds of crosscurrents in the room," Axelrod added. "There are relationships…the president of the IOC, former president, was heading up the effort for Spain. I'm sure those relationships meant something. I'm not an expert on the internal machinations of the IOC."

(CNN) - President Barack Obama's top political adviser had a blunt message Sunday for protesters who took part in a Tea Party rally the day before in Washington: "They're wrong" on health care.

"The president made it very, very clear that he wants to build on the system that we have," rather than create a vast new system, David Axelrod told CBS' "Face the Nation."

Axelrod said the reform would bring changes that benefit those with health coverage and those who can't afford it or lose it.

"We ought to focus on what it's about and not on distortions of it," Axelrod said of the president's plan.
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President Barack Obama is considering giving a major speech detailing specifics on a health-care reform bill.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – President Barack Obama is considering giving a major speech detailing specifics on what he would like to see included in a health-care reform bill, a senior White House aide said Wednesday.

Senior advisor David Axelrod told CNN, the president is looking at the possibility of a speech as "one of his options" in pushing forward his health care agenda after he returns from vacation at Camp David next week.

Obama has outlined broad principles for what he would like in health-care reform, but he has left most details to leaders in Congress. Now, White House aides say, the dynamic has changed.

"We're entering a new season," Axelrod said. "It's time to synthesize and harmonize these strands and get this done."

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David Axelrod is fighting back against health care 'lies and distortions.'

WASHINGTON (CNN) – David Axelrod, a senior adviser to President Obama, is aiming to debunk online "myths" about the president's health care plan with a viral e-mail of his own.

"Unfortunately, some of the old tactics we know so well are back - even the viral e-mails that fly unchecked and under the radar, spreading all sorts of lies and distortions," Axelrod wrote in the e-mail, which was sent out Thursday. He added, "Right now, someone you know probably has a question about reform that could be answered by what's below. So what are you waiting for? Forward this e-mail."

Calling it "probably one of the longest e-mails I've ever sent," Axelrod split his message up into three topics: "8 ways reform provides security and stability to those with or without coverage," "8 common myths about reform," and "8 reasons we need health insurance reform now."

He tackled a number of contentious issues, among them the rumor that the health care plan would impose euthanasia for senior citizens a "malicious myth." Axelrod also said the new plan would "forbid many forms of rationing" and argued it would help lower health care costs in the long run.

Axelrod encouraged readers to go to an official Web site - whitehouse.gov/realitycheck - which he said would "knock down the rumors and lies that are floating around the Internet."

“I can tell you with absolutely honesty,” Axelrod said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, “that when I sit around with my political friends . . . there’s very little or no discussion of Sarah Palin.”

“And I really have no idea what Gov. Palin is going to do,” the Obama aide told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King. “She’s entering private life now. We wish her well and it’s up to her to decide what role she’s going to play in the future. She’s got plenty of advice, I’m sure. She doesn’t need mine.”

After making a surprise announcement late last month that she would be stepping down, Palin is set to transfer power to her lieutenant governor on Sunday amid speculation that her bombshell move is intended to lay the groundwork for a White House run in 2012.

While touring the pyramids at Giza, Obama came across a hieroglyphic that bore a striking resemblance to the 44th president – especially Obama’s prominent ears which Obama himself has pointed out many times since arriving on the national political stage.

“’It’s me,’” White House senior adviser David Axelrod says Obama said when the presidential entourage came across the hieroglyphic.

“And I have to confess that the ears were a giveaway,” Axelrod said in an interview that aired Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.

“It really did look like him. I was wondering whether someone chiseled that in there in honor of our visit. But apparently this was done some thousands of years ago.”

“We didn’t know what to make of it. But our guide said he thinks the president might be descended from King Tut,” Axelrod also told John King.

“We have no proof of that. We’re not claiming that. We think perhaps he says that to all the visiting dignitaries,” Axelrod quickly added perhaps trying to head off another partisan attack on Obama’s global celebrity status.

“But the ears were unmistakable, I must say.”

While touring the pyramids at Giza, Obama came across a hieroglyphic that bore a striking resemblance to the 44th president – especially Obama’s prominent ears which Obama himself has pointed out many times since arriving on the national political stage.

“’It’s me,’” White House senior adviser David Axelrod says Obama said when the presidential entourage came across the hieroglyphic.

“And I have to confess that the ears were a giveaway,” Axelrod said in an interview that aired Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.

“It really did look like him. I was wondering whether someone chiseled that in there in honor of our visit. But apparently this was done some thousands of years ago.”

“We didn’t know what to make of it. But our guide said he thinks the president might be descended from King Tut,” Axelrod also told John King.

“We have no proof of that. We’re not claiming that. We think perhaps he says that to all the visiting dignitaries,” Axelrod quickly added perhaps trying to head off another partisan attack on Obama’s global celebrity status.

“But the ears were unmistakable, I must say.”

“I think this is kind of a sideshow,” Obama adviser David Axelrod said in an interview that aired Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.

“The point she was making is that we’re all the sum total of our experiences and you bring those experiences with you to the bench,” Axelrod also said in the interview. “It’s the same point that Justice Ginsburg and Justice Alito have made and I think that the debate is kind of a diversion from her 17-year record as judge.”

When attention is focused on Judge Sotomayor’s record Axelrod, one of the president’s closest advisers, said that Obama’s Supreme Court pick showed herself to be a fair, even-handed jurist.

“The fact is that there is nothing in her record that reflects anything but fairness and fidelity to the law and I think that’s what we want in a U.S. Supreme Court justice,” Axelrod told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King.

Axelrod also said Sunday that Senate Republicans should not filibuster Sotomayor’s nomination, even though Democrats in the Senate have mounted filibusters against Republican judicial nominees in recent years.

“That would be a shame,” Axelrod said about the prospect of a filibuster against Sotomayor. “They ought to confirm her,” the Obama aide added.