Obama breaks new ground in second prime time news conference

The president spoke and answered questions for nearly an hour and never received a single question about Iraq or Afghanistan, a sign of just how focused the country has been on economic issues in recent months.

Asked by CNN's Ed Henry "why is it that it seems Andrew Cuomo seems to be in New York getting more actual action" on AIG than the Obama administration, the president defended his response to the AIG controversy. But Henry persisted, asking why the president waited "days to come out and express that outrage." Obama retorted: "It took us a couple of days because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak."

The press conference, in the East Room of the White House, came just a day after Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner unveiled the administration's new bank rescue plan, which would buy up troubled assets from financial institutions, and it followed a week of outrage directed at executives at insurance giant AIG.

Obama said he understood the outrage but tried to direct the public's attention to solutions to the nation's economic problems.

The press conference was so focused on economic issues that the president turned a question from ABC's Ann Compton about race into an opportunity to once again discuss his economic agenda.

"Yours is a rather historic presidency," said Compton. "And I'm just wondering whether, in any of the policy debates that you've had within the White House, the issue of race has come up or whether it has in the way you feel you've been perceived by other leaders or by the American people?"

"I think that the last 64 days has been dominated by me trying to figure out how we're going to fix the economy, and that affects black, brown and white," Obama shot back. The president did acknowledge the historic significance of his presidency but suggested that the impact of that had diminished as the country struggled with pressing economic concerns.

"And, you know, obviously, at the inauguration, I think that there was justifiable pride on the part of the country that we had taken a step to move us beyond some of the searing legacies of racial discrimination in this country, but that lasted about a day," he said. Obama said "the American people are judging me exactly the way I should be judged. And that is: Are we taking the steps to improve liquidity in the financial markets, create jobs, get businesses to re-open, keep America safe? And that's what I've been spending my time thinking about."

President Obama appeared to break new ground by calling on a reporter from Ebony magazine to ask a question at the prime time press conference. Ebony reporter Kevin Chappell asked Obama about the "tent cities sprouting up across the country" causing families to sleep under bridges in tents across the country.

Obama responded that he was "heartbroken" that any families were homeless, and added "the most important thing that I can do on their behalf is to make sure their parents have a job."

The president ended his prime time discussion by focusing on persistence and patience. "That whole philosophy of persistence, by the way, is one that I'm going to be emphasizing again and again in the months and years to come as long as I'm in this office. I'm a big believer in persistence," he said.

He also expressed faith that Americans would understand the difficult problems he inherited and the time it takes to fix them. "You look back four years from now, I think, hopefully, people will judge that body of work and say, 'This is a big ocean liner. It's not a speedboat. It doesn't turn around immediately. But we're in a better -- better place because of the decisions that we made,'" Obama said.