Obama on a third term: 'I think if I ran, I could win'

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia – Four more years?

President Barack Obama said Tuesday that he’s confident he could win a third term, if only the Constitution would let him run.


“I actually think I’m a pretty good president. I think if I ran, I could win. But I can’t,” he said.

Obama said that though he’s looking forward to being out of office for the freedom outside of the security bubble it’ll give him and for being able to make more visits to Africa, there is more work he’d like to do in office.

But, he said, “the law’s the law.”

Obama made the remarks in a speech here to the African Union headquarters, contrasting the American system to the many African leaders who hold onto power for decades, usually only leaving because of coups or dying of old age.

Obama wasn’t talking American politics. But he seemed to be making a pitch for fresh blood — open for interpretation about how that would apply to Republican and Democratic fields.

“I’m still a pretty young man, but I know that someone with new insights and new energy will be good for my country,” Obama said.

He ended by returning to the theme.

“Old people think old ways,” he said. “You can see my gray hair, I’m getting old.”

Obama’s comments follow remarks Monday here when Obama eagerly leapt into an attack on Republican candidates Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump, ripping them and Sens. Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz as not serious enough to be president.

That was Obama feeling out a place for himself in the 2016 race, knocking the Republicans who continue to deride him as not up to the job.

Tuesday, he went further: If he wanted to, he thinks, he could beat all of them anyway.