Obama Says He’ll Break the Law as Much as He Needs to in Order to be a Successful President

President Obama insisted in an interview with the Huffington Post that “by hook or by crook” he’ll be a successful president. He made the comments in answering a question about whether he’d become a “more progressive president over time.”

“No,” Obama said to the question, he had not become more progressive. “I think that what we are constantly doing is looking for opportunities to advance the agenda that I talked about back in 2007 and 2008. I mean, remember, in the first two years of my administration we advanced more progressive legislation than anybody in 50 years. …

“The Affordable Care Act, which is working better than even I thought it was going to work, and we now have 16 million-plus people who are benefiting directly from having health insurance, and we have another 130 million who don’t have to worry about losing their coverage because of pre-existing conditions. Millions of young people who are on their parents’ plan. Those are pretty progressive.

“What we have done though is consistently looked for additional opportunities to get stuff done. Wherever we see a possibility of increasing wages, creating more jobs, making sure that more people are able to access opportunity, we’re gonna seize it. And we’re going to, wherever possible, try to reach out to Republicans and see if they can work with us. And where they’re not willing to work with us, we will do it administratively or we will convene the private sector.

“By hook or by crook, we’re going to make sure that when I leave this office, that the country is more prosperous, more people have opportunity, kids have a better education, we’re more competitive, climate change is being taken more seriously than it was, and we are actually trying to do something about it. Those are going to be the measures by which I look back and say whether I’ve been successful as president.