Romney surrogate John Sununu apologized today for saying he wished President Obama "would learn to be an American."

"I made a mistake. I shouldn't have used those words," the former New Hampshire governor said in an interview on CNN.

Sununu said he was trying to make a point that Obama doesn't understand how jobs are created in America and that he doesn't give credit to entrepreneurs.

"The president has to stop denigrating American values," Sununu said on CNN.

Sununu's original comment, made during a conference call with reporters, drew fire from the Obama campaign that Romney's team has "gone off the deep end."

Sununu, who was White House chief of staff under President George H.W. Bush, also said on Fox News today that Obama "spent his early years in Hawaii smoking something" and "another set of years in Indonesia."

Lis Smith, a spokeswoman for Obama for America, denounced Sununu's remarks as a "meltdown" aimed at changing the subject from Mitt Romney's at Bain Capital.

"The Romney campaign has officially gone off the deep end," Smith said. "The question is what else they'll pull to avoid answering serious questions about Romney's tenure at Bain Capital and investments in foreign tax havens and offshore accounts. This meltdown and over-the-top rhetoric won't make things better — it only calls attention to how desperate they are to change the conversation."

In the morning conference call with reporters, Sununu sought to clarify his comment about Obama's American identity by putting it into context of the jobs debate. "What I thought I said ... The president has to learn the American formula for creating business," Sununu said. "The American formula for creating business is not to have government creating business."

Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, a Romney campaign co-chairman, said on MSNBC that it was "appropriate" for Sununu to try to walk back his remarks.

"The governor has a knack for colorful language and can be very informative and entertaining. This one, he admitted perhaps he wasn't as clear as he should have been and issued a clarification," Pawlenty said.

(Contributing: Martha T. Moore)