Politics
When he says that "the same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office." The trouble is a good deal of that anger is aimed at the very things that he, even more than President Bush, represents.
Here's what I wrote on this subject in June, 2008. So far, it's looking fairly accurate:
If Senator Obama becomes president, and if the Democratic party has control of both houses of the legislature in 2009, as seems quite likely, governing might be a rude awakening. The benefit of being in opposition is that one needn't be specific. The trouble with governing is that one must be so.
If part of the reason why President Bush has had such a rough time of things is that Americans are tried of the modern administrative/ bureaucratic state (even as they don't want their own benefits cut, or many regulations eliminated), and if Democrats think that the reason why Bush is unpopular is that he's been governing as a conservative, they could be in for a rude awakening.
Bush turned his back on the limited government/ leave-us-alone side of the conservative coalition. Now that the party of government is fully and obviously in charge blame is being placed where is more properly belongs.
It wasn't just Bush. It seems to me that in the mid- to late-2000s "the limited government/ leave-us-alone side of the conservative coalition" took a lot of abuse from the "win the War on Terror at any cost" side of the coalition. Most of the libertarian types I know either stayed home or voted third party in 2008. Some even voted for Obama.
I doubt Obama meant to suggest that the public was angry in any way with him or his policies. I think it was merely a clumsy attempt to "blame it on Bush."
Obama was swept into office because of anger towards Bush and Republicans. Scott Brown was swept into office because of lingering anger towards Bush and Republicans.
I'm serious. I doubt Obama is capable of serious self-criticism.