--- title: How Obama Is Spinning The Midterms: Talking to Dan Pfeiffer | TIME description: TIME's Michael Scherer interviews Dan Pfeiffer, the White House Communications Director, about President Obama’s first term achievements, the midterm elections and what comes next. canonical: https://time.com/video/K0sWOjYz/ og:title: How Obama Is Spinning The Midterms: Talking to Dan Pfeiffer og:description: TIME's Michael Scherer interviews Dan Pfeiffer, the White House Communications Director, about President Obama’s first term achievements, the midterm elections and what comes next. og:url: https://time.com/video/K0sWOjYz/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/K0sWOjYz/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Obama Is Spinning The Midterms: Talking to Dan Pfeiffer twitter:description: TIME's Michael Scherer interviews Dan Pfeiffer, the White House Communications Director, about President Obama’s first term achievements, the midterm elections and what comes next. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/K0sWOjYz/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # How Obama Is Spinning The Midterms: Talking to Dan Pfeiffer > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: How Obama Is Spinning The Midterms: Talking to Dan Pfeiffer [Watch (HLS stream): How Obama Is Spinning The Midterms: Talking to Dan Pfeiffer](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/K0sWOjYz.m3u8) (5:15)  _Published 2010-10-26. TIME's Michael Scherer interviews Dan Pfeiffer, the White House Communications Director, about President Obama’s first term achievements, the midterm elections and what comes next._ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:06 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Obama on Midterm Elections](/video/YgAzmeYS/) ### Obama on Midterm Elections [Obama's Iraq Update](/video/bTYOK4pI/) ### Obama's Iraq Update [Obama's War](/video/0eLcnjFZ/) ### Obama's War --- ## Transcript >> I'm Michael Scherer with TIME magazine. I'm here with Dan Pfeiffer, the Communications Director for the White House, one week out in the midterm elections. Dan, thanks for coming by. >> Absolutely. Thanks for having me. >> The last month, the President has probably traveled, gotten a chance to travel more around the country, talked to more regular folk than at any point since he's been in the White House. Is there anything that you guys feel like you've learned from these trips? >> The President wants to get out of the White House, get out on the trail, be able to go to the donut shop in Seattle. What we've seen is this idea that Democrats are downtrodden and depressed. It's not as true as you would think it would be if you're watching cable TV in Washington. 35, 000 people in Ohio came out, felt a lot like the history of 2008. 26, 000 people in Madison, Wisconsin. It's good to see that folks writing the obituary is the Democratic Party right now are probably a little bit premature. >> And some of those backyards seems, remember the CNBC Town Hall. There are people presenting themselves as Democrats, presenting themselves as Obama voters who are saying I'm still waiting or I'm frustrated. >> He came to office in the midst of the greatest financial crisis in the half century. Unemployment is near 10 percent. People are gonna be frustrated. He's frustrated. He knows that we've taken important steps to stabilize this economy, kept it from falling into the second Great Depression, but there's more work to do. There are people who don't have jobs. People are afraid of losing their jobs. He understands that. He sees that in the letters that he reads every night. >> There was a recent New York Times story about the President and then he was quoted saying that he let himself over the last year to be painted too much as a tax and spend liberal. From the Communications Office, is that something you agree with that there was a lack of care in taking care of the President's image? >> If you have been designing the first 6 months of this presidency in a vacuum, we wouldn't have done the things we did, but they had to be done. Even though come in the office and pass the Recovery Act, you would know worth to save the auto companies. Those are things that we knew weren't popular even though there's a famous story about how David Axelrod sat the President down right before he took office and said looking at all the economic data he said a year from now your poll numbers aren't gonna be what they are today. You don't have to be a political genius to know that the necessary steps to prevent the economy from falling off the cliff would be things would be unpopular even though we know from TARP or any making money on a lot of the investments there, the auto rescue trying to be phenomenal and successful and the Recovery Act has been one of the pot money that's had the most accountability, the least fraud and has worked out well. You know I think at some point after election there'll be plenty of time to go back and look at things we could've done differently. I could think of things I wished I had done differently but the driving thing here that is substance of the decisions we had to make there are the right decisions we stand by those decisions. >> Well, why wait until after the election? You have an opportunity right now to tell us what you would've done differently. >> If you wanna invite me back after election I'm happy to do that. We never do post- game analysis in the 8th inning. >> After the election, I mean what is the White House message to voters who want to see more comedy in Washington, more working together across party lines. Are there things that the President wants to try differently, issues he wants to bring up to actually deliver on that change Washington thing he campaigned on? >> It's important to sort of have the history of how we got to the place we are which is this President came in office. He extended his hand to the Republican Party in a way which has not happened before. Even before inauguration, he traveled up to the Hill and visit with that Republican House Caucus, Republican Senate Caucus. He was going up there to talk them about the Recovery Act. On his way up there, Minority leader Boehner held a press conference announcing that all the Republicans are gonna post the Recovery Act before the President even addressed him and that sort of set the tone for what we've seen over these 2 years which is Mr. Boehner and Senator McConnell made a political decision, shady decision that what would be best for the Republican Party would be to impose everything this President and the Democratic state in the view that would help them in the upcoming elections. We'll see on Tuesday if that works, but the hope is after the election the Republicans can make a different choice. This President is always willing to work with the Republican. This means history working with folks like Senator Lugar and Senator Coburn on issues of nuclear non- proliferation and cutting spending. He obviously will do that in the future. >> Last question. A lot of people that work in the West Wing are the same people who are working on the campaign. You've been together now 4 years plus and what are the sort of lessons for the first year for the whole team about how it is to run the country from the White House as opposed to run for President from a campaign office in Chicago? >> At the time after having worked in the campaign for nearly 2 years straight I was confident in this historic election that went down to the wire and the primary this incredibly tumultuous general election, I was confident that'll be the hardest thing I ever did in my life. I was wrong. The sheer volume of things that we're dealing with at any one time and you know you have these huge issues on the economy and foreign policy. You know you think you have everything possibly in hand you have to deal with that day and then something comes totally out of left field that you weren't expecting and that's a challenge of working every day, but we wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. >> Are you gonna rotate out after the campaign? Will you be in the White House a year from now? >> I will be here in the White House as long as the President will have me here. >> A nice nod answer. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"How Obama Is Spinning The Midterms: Talking to Dan Pfeiffer","description":"TIME's Michael Scherer interviews Dan Pfeiffer, the White House Communications Director, about President Obama’s first term achievements, the midterm elections and what comes next.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/K0sWOjYz/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2010-10-26T02:10:48.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/K0sWOjYz.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/K0sWOjYz/","duration":"PT5M15S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/K0sWOjYz/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```