Despite a dull performance in his last week's presidential debate, United States President Barack Obama has termed it as 'bad night' and is confident of winning November 6 election against Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
"Governor Romney had a good night. I had a bad night. It's not the first time," Obama told the ABC news in his first televised interview since the presidential debate in Denver on October 3.
Obama will now face Romney in the second of the three presidential debates on October 16 in New York. "I think what's important is the, the fundamentals of what this race is about have not changed. You know, Governor Romney went to a lotta trouble to try to hide what his positions are," Obama said asserting that he would fight his way back.
"This was one event. We have got four weeks to go. Nobody is going to be fighting harder than I am. .. What they need is to make sure they tune in on Tuesday next week," he said.
"If you have a bad game you just move on, you look forward to the next one and it makes you that much more determined," he added.
Asked whether it's possible that his poor showing had handed Romney the election, Obama replied, "no." He said "yes" with confidence when asked if he was going to win the November 6 election.
Obama's appeared for first interview after his lackluster performance during the October 3 debate, after which Romney is said to have an edge over Obama. Earlier in the day in a telephonic interview to a radio show Obama said that he had been "too polite" in dealing with Romney.
"I think it's fair to say I was just too polite, because, you know, it is hard sometimes just keep on saying and what you are saying is not true," Obama told the radio host Tom Joyner.
"It gets repetitive. But, you know, the good news is, is that's just the first one. Governor Romney put forward a whole bunch of stuff that either involved him running away from positions that he had taken or doubling down on things like Medicare vouchers that are going to hurt him long term," he said.
When asked why he "had the open shot and ... didn't take it" in last week's debate, Obama said "I understand, but you know, what happens though is that when people lose one game, you know, this is a long haul."
"I think it's fair to say that we will see a little more activity at the next one. But keep in mind that, you know, the issues that are at stake for folks haven't changed. You know? We've got millions of people who've got health care right now because of our health care bill. And they won't have it if Mitt Romney is elected president," Obama said.
Acknowledging that this is going to be a close race, Obama insisted that he will win the presidential election. "This is always going to be a close race. Governor Romney kept on making mistakes month after month so it made it look artificially like this was, might end up being a cakewalk. But we understood internally that it never would be."
"That it was going to tight -- it tightened over the last three or four days, but it could have tightened after the convention if they had not had such a bad convention," he said.
"By next week I think a lot of the hand-wringing will be complete because we are going to go ahead and win this thing," Obama said with confidence.
