Obama: 'I screwed up' with Daschle

In only his second week in office, Barack Obama is punching the restart button on his presidency.

In Oval Office interviews, President Obama is blaming himself for the Tom Daschle controversy.

On Tuesday, Day 14 of a tenure that began with high hopes and soaring promises of bringing a new competence to Washington, Obama essentially admitted that he had lost ground in confronting his biggest challenge, fixing the country's crippled economy, due to the "self-inflicted injury" of hiring appointees who had failed to pay their taxes.

He shed two of those appointees then took to the airwaves—conducting not one but five Oval Office network television interviews in which he sought to seize control over an economic stimulus debate in which Republicans have found traction by painting themselves as defenders of taxpayers and homeowners, while portraying Democrats as frivolous big-spenders.

"I'm frustrated with myself, with our team. ... I'm here on television saying I screwed up," Obama told NBC's Brian Williams. He lamented unintentionally sending a message that there are "two sets of rules" for paying taxes, "one for prominent people, and one for ordinary folks.""I take responsibility for this mistake," he told Fox News.

The AP says he repeated nearly the same words in several other interviews. Here's what ABC's Charles Gibson says about his sit-down with the president.

He told ABC's Charlie Gibson that he "can't afford glitches because, right now, what I should be spending time talking to you about is how we're going to put 3 to 4 million people back to work."

"This is a self-induced injury that I'm angry about," he added, "and we're going to make sure we get it fixed."

Obama's language was striking in part because the man he replaced in the White House, George W. Bush, so famously refused to admit error, at least until his final days in office.

For the new president, winning passage of a stimulus has become only more difficult in recent weeks. A surprisingly unified GOP has taken control of the debate, and embarrassed Democrats, by highlighting controversial expenditures in the $819 billion bill passed last week by the Democrat-led House, such as funding for contraceptives and for new sod for the National Mall.
Those items were stripped from the bill, but their presence in the debate put the White House on the defensive in pushing legislation that, not long ago, many Democrats had thought could be delivered, sealed and signed by the new president within days, if not hours, of his taking office on Jan. 20.

At the same time, U.S. banks have deteriorated further, raising the prospects that Obama will have to press not only for the stimulus but also for a second, unpopular bank bailout.