Health

WASHINGTON (CBS News) ― Add this one to the presidential experience: the heart-shaped potato.

By the time Barack Obama came on stage to the taping of the "Late Show" on Monday, host David Letterman had offered up 10 reasons why in the world the president had agreed to do it.

Among Letterman's theories: Obama said yes without thinking about it, or as Letterman put it, "Like Bush did with Iraq."

But Obama had other ideas. It turns out he was listening when Letterman had bantered with a woman in the audience who brought -- yes -- a potato in the shape of a heart to the show.

Obama told Letterman: "The main reason I'm here? I want to see that heart-shaped potato."

The woman tossed the potato to Letterman.

She agreed to let Obama keep it. Said the president: "This is remarkable."

Obama also had his most irreverent answer yet on the question of whether some of the vitriolic reaction to his health care plan is driven at least partly by racism.

"First of all, I think it's important to realize that I was actually black before the election," Obama said to huge laughs from Letterman and the audience.

Responded Letterman: "How long have you been a black man?"
Letterman covered a number of topics with Obama -- many of them serious -- in a taping that ran about 40 minutes. The show will be broadcast on CBS on Monday evening.

On the war in Afghanistan, Obama said he knows some people want him to bring troops home, and others are calling for him to increase U.S. force levels to combat the insurgency. The top U.S. commander there is warning the war could be lost without more troops.

Obama said he won't make a decision on sending in more troops, though, until he completes a comprehensive review of the war effort and settles on his next strategy.

"I'm going to be asking some very hard questions," Obama said.

Obama's visit made him the first sitting president to appear on Letterman's program. He had been on Letterman's show five times before, though, most recently in September 2008.

The White House said it was a good way for him to reach yet another audience as Obama wraps up a blitz of TV appearances, trying mainly to build support for his health care plan.

Over the weekend, Obama said requiring people to get health insurance and fining them if they don't would not amount to a backhanded tax increase. "I absolutely reject that notion," the president said.

Blanketing most of the Sunday TV news shows, Obama defended his proposed health care overhaul, including a key point of the various health care bills on Capitol Hill: mandating that people get health insurance to share the cost burden fairly among all. Those who failed to get coverage would face financial penalties.

Obama said other elements of the plan would make insurance affordable for people, from a new comparison-shopping "exchange" to tax credits.

Telling people to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase, Obama told ABC's "This Week."

"What it's saying is, is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore," said Obama. "Right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance. Nobody considers that a tax increase."

• Video: Obama Discusses Health, U.S. Troops, More
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Obama faces an enormous political and communications challenge in selling his health care plan as Congress debates how to pay for it all.

The president told CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer that, in detailing his health care proposals, he is attempting to warn Americans that the federal budget cannot sustain the current system and "a lot of Americans are going to be much worse off over time."

Schieffer asked if the president could still keep his campaign promise that there would be no additional tax on people making less than $250,000 a year, no payroll tax and no capital gains.

"I can still keep that promise," Mr. Obama said, "because … about two thirds of what we've proposed would be from money that's already in the health care system and just being spent badly."

"This is not me making wild assertions," he continued.

Obama put his support behind the idea of taxing employers that offer high-cost insurance plans.

"I do think that giving a disincentive to insurance companies to offer Cadillac plans that don't make people healthier is part of the way that we're going to bring down health care costs for everybody over the long term," Obama said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

• Read: America's Healthy Future Act Of 2009 
• Video: Obama Addresses Congress On Health Care Overhaul
• Slideshow: Obama Makes Health Pitch To Congress
• Analysis: Fact-Checking Obama's Remarks
• RNC Criticism Of Government-Run Health Care Plan 
• White House Touts Key Budget Points Of Health Reform

Obama's network interviews were taped Friday at the White House. He became the first president to appear on five Sunday network shows in the same morning, an extraordinary effort to build public support for his top domestic priority.

The goal is expand and improve health insurance coverage and rein in long-term costs.

Yet despite so many weeks of speeches, town halls and interviews, Obama said he has found it difficult at times to make a complex topic clear and relevant.

"I've tried to keep it digestible," Obama said. "It's very hard for people to get their arms around it. And that's been a case where I have been humbled and I just keep on trying harder."

Obama told Univision's "Al Punto" ("To the Point") that the strong opposition to his plan is part of a political strategy.

"Well, part of it is ... that the opposition has made a decision," he said. "They are just not going to support anything, for political reasons."  

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