Obama: Aloof Image Is Media Creation

President Obama isn't aloof, he says—it's just that he and Michelle don't tend to paint the town red. "My suspicion is that this whole critique has to do with the fact that I don’t go to a lot of Washington parties and, as a consequence, the Washington press corps maybe just doesn’t feel like I’m in the mix enough with them," he tells Time in an interview, noted by Politico. "And they figure, well, if I’m not spending time with them, I must be cold and aloof."

"Michelle and I don’t do the social scene, because as busy as we are, we have a limited amount of time, and we want to be good parents at a time that’s vitally important for our kids." The Obamas' social life has nothing to do with his clashes with Congress, he notes. "John Boehner and I get along fine. The problem was that no matter how much golf we played or no matter how much we yukked it up, he had trouble getting his caucus to go along with doing the responsible thing on a whole bunch of issues over the past year." Click to read the extensive interview. (More media stories.)