Courtesy of The Grio
WASHINGTON (AP) — Offering riffs on Mick Jagger and reflections on race, President Barack Obama is capping a week devoted to courting young votes with a Rolling Stone magazine cover interview that segues from presidential musings on politics to foreign policy to pop culture.
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Sounding an election-year theme, Obama tells the magazine that Mitt Romney can’t disavow the conservative views he embraced as candidate during the Republican presidential primaries. At the same time, Obama acknowledges that he, too, is struggling against public skepticism because of the slow economic recovery.
The interview, conducted earlier this month by Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, will appear in the issue of the magazine that hits newsstands Friday. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the interview ahead of publication.
For Obama, the magazine interview and its cover portrait will complete a week of outreach to young voters, including a two-day tour of three college campuses in key election swing states and an appearance on NBC’s “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.”
Analyzing the election campaign ahead of him, Obama avoided characterizing Romney as a flip-flopper, a common criticism Romney faced during the Republican primary contests, and instead tagged him as a candidate who willfully embraces the Republican Party’s most conservative views.
“I don’t think that their nominee is going to be able to suddenly say, ‘Everything I’ve said for the last six months, I didn’t mean,’” Obama said. “I’m assuming that he meant it. When you’re running for president, people are paying attention to what you’re saying.”