Interview of the President by Mort Kondracke

Q Both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are basing their campaigns on the idea that Washington is broken.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

Q Do you think Washington is broken?

THE PRESIDENT: If I were running for President, I would be for change. As a matter of fact, every candidate has got to figure out a way to be for change. I campaigned for change every time I ran, except for twice: 1998, my reelection campaign for governor; 2004 my reelection campaign for President. (Laughter.)

Can Washington function better? Of course it can. As a matter of fact, I pointed out last night, there's a good way for people to earn the trust of Washington, and that is through reforming the appropriations process. In other words, I pointed out that earmarks, particularly those that are slipped into committee reports, conference reports, or bill reports, really is not a democratic process. And that's why I put the -- will sign the EO this afternoon, basically saying that if you do this again, I will instruct people not to spend the money. The money will be available; it's just not going to be available for those projects, it will be a competitive process under which the money will be spent.

So to the extent that Washington needs reform, of course it does. Is this administration addressing it? Yes we are. But I can understand why people running for office will be saying, give me a chance, I can do it better. That's the message of every race.

Q But on the basis of your seven years, now going on eight, there are things that you wanted to get done that haven't gotten done that seemingly can't get done: immigration reform, entitlement reform, health care reform -- I mean, one thing after another, big things that --

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I wouldn't say "one thing after another." I would say that those are certainly three big things. We have reformed education, we have reformed Medicare, we have cut taxes. But no question -- let me take entitlement reform. Entitlement reform is an issue that is evolutionary, in this sense: Social Security has gone from the third rail of American politics. If you address it, you will lose politically; that was the whole mantra. My attitude is, as time goes on, as younger people begin to understand that Social Security is failing, that if you don't address it, it will be the third rail.

Secondly, what has changed is that the notion of defined benefits inherent in the old retirement programs is now shifting to defined contributions. More and more Americans have got their 401(k)s. More and more people understand the power of managing your own assets.

Thirdly, I believe that over time, minority communities will recognize that one of the failures of our society has been the accumulation of assets, assets that people can -- in their communities, that they can pass on from one generation to the next. And a powerful part of the freedom agenda at home has got to be to have systems that encourage asset accumulation.

And so it's -- this is an evolutionary issue. One thing history will be able to say is that we finally had a President who stood up in front of the nation more than one time and said, here is a solution for Social Security.

And on immigration, my judgment on immigration is, is that we should have had a bill last year. And delays in the process enabled the voices of negativism to go on the offense, and it frightened the members. But what's going to end up happening is, is that there's going to be enormous pressure on our economy, for starters, because people who are relying upon foreign workers to do jobs that just aren't simply being done otherwise will start pressuring Congress to come up with rational plans. And if you start addressing the worker issue, it's going to mean that you're going to also have to address those who are here illegally.