The Hill News

President Obama said on Friday that his administration had lost focus of the fact that "leadership isn't just legislation," suggesting that he could have done a better job of connecting with voters.

Obama conceded that his White House had sometimes lost touch with the voters who elected him in 2008, and fallen short in its efforts to persuade them on the measures he had taken in the past two years to resuscitate the economy, reform healthcare, and add new regulations to the U.S. financial system.

"I think that over the course of two years we were so busy and so focused on getting a bunch of stuff done that we stopped paying attention to the fact that leadership isn’t just legislation," Obama said in an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes," in an interview to air Sunday.

The interview is Obama's first sit-down with the press since Tuesday's elections, when a GOP wave swept Republicans into the majority in the House. Obama met the press on Wednesd! ay in a press conference at the White House.

Obama blamed on Wednesday the poorly-performing economy for Democrats' losses, arguing that only if voters were more satisfied with the pace of job creation, they would have supported some of his legislative initiatives more.

The president's words on Wednesday prompted Republicans to pounce. House Speaker-in-waiting John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday that Obama and Democrats were "in denial" about the message of the election, which GOP leaders say was a repudiation of the president's policies.

But the president appealed to a variation of the argument made by some Democrats before the election, who said that the White House needed to do a better job of selling its agenda.

"[I]t’s a matter of persuading people. And giving them confidence and bringing them together. And setting a tone. And making an argument that people can understand," Obama told "60 Minutes."

"And I think that we haven’t always been successful at that," the president added. "And I take personal responsibility for that. And it’s something that I’ve got to examine carefully as I go forward."