Transcript of CNBC’s Barack Obama interview

Harwood: You've also drawn comparisons, or the challenge facing you has drawn comparisons with Franklin Roosevelt ...

Obama: Right.

Harwood:  ... since this is the worst financial crisis since the Depression. When he delivered his inaugural speech, he told the American people, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Obama: Right.

Harwood: When you deliver your speech on January 20th, do you see yourself as having the same task of reassurance for the American people? And how do you balance that with the need to convey the urgency of doing so?

Obama: Well ... (unintelligible) ... if you look — as you might imagine, I've been ready inaugural speeches lately, and if you look at FDR's first speech, the line that's remembered is "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." But actually the bulk of the speech centered around the need to act and act now. And he explained, I think, the nature of the crisis, both in his inaugural speech and subsequent fireside chats, as well as anybody. This is a bit of advice that I received from one of the former presidents. He said, `Part of the reason, Barack, that you're doing well right now is because you don't talk down to the American people, you play it straight and just explain what it is that's taking place.' And I think that — I have such confidence in the American people. If you just play it straight with them, if you explain to them, here's our challenge, here's how we've gotten here and here's where I think we need to go, then I have enormous confidence that the American people will rise up to the challenge. So my job, both in the inauguration speech and in the months to come, is simply to explain as honestly and truthfully as possible what the circumstances are, what the best ideas are that are out there in terms of meeting those challenges, and if I do that, I feel confident that we'll come together to solve these problems.

Harwood: There's an awful lot of noise in contemporary American culture. Argumentation on the left on right, on TV all the time. In the financial system as well. When you'd give your economic speech tomorrow, on CNBC we'll be running ... with all the market indexes as you're talking showing whether the markets are going up or down.

Obama: Right.

Harwood: How will you absorb that information? Is it important to you or is it important for you to tune that out and decide from the beginning that it's unimportant?

Obama: Well, look. I think it's important not to live in the bubble. So you've got to be open to outside information, particularly criticism. I'll tell you, I very rarely read good press and I often read bad press, not because I agree with it but because I want to get a sense of are there areas where I'm falling short and I can do better.

Harwood: You haven't gotten a lot of bad press so far.

Obama: Well, I'm sure it's coming. The — but the markets are obviously a slightly different situation. Right now, given the sensitivities of the market, I've got to pay some attention to market psychology because part of what we have right now is such a loss of trust in both the marketplace and in government that restoring that confidence, restoring that trust is going to be very important. I'm not going to part of watching the crawl at the bottom of an interview. What I will be doing is making sure that I'm communicating with key market participants on a regular basis, again, to explain to them what exactly our plans are and to solicit from them good ideas. And overall, though, one thing I'm pretty clear about is that as president, I've got to be looking out at the horizon. I can't be looking at today's headlines, because if I do, then I'm probably not going to make decisions based on what's best for the country. I'm going to be spending a lot of time worrying about day-to-day politics, and that's something that I've been trying to block out.

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