President Barack Obama expressed regret to author Bob Woodward for taking pointed shots at Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s much-ballyhooed budget proposal at a major speech he delivered last year, according to ABC News.
In a July interview with Woodward — whose book on the fiscal battles between the president and Republicans on Capitol Hill, “The Price of Politics,” will be released on Tuesday — Obama said it was a “mistake” to castigate Ryan and his budget, claiming that he was unaware that the House Budget Committee chairman would be in attendance at the speech in April of 2011. Obama also incorrectly referred to Mitt Romney’s running mate as “Jack Ryan” during the interview.
From ABC News:
“I’ll go ahead and say it – I think that I was not aware when I gave that speech that Jack Ryan was going to be sitting right there,” the president told Woodward according to audio transcripts of their conversations, provided to ABC News.
“And so I did feel, in retrospect, had I known – we literally didn’t know he was going to be there until – or I didn’t know, until I arrived. I might have modified some of it so that we would leave more negotiations open, because I do think that they felt like we were trying to embarrass him,” Obama continued. “We made a mistake.”
