(CNSNews.com) -- President Barack Obama is "quite comfortable" with the prospect of being a one-term president in order to address the issues he is concerned about, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Friday. The comment came on the same day the president's approval reached a new low, with only a 45 percent approval rating in the Zogby International poll released Friday. The poll said that 51 percent disapprove of the president's job performance. The Real Clear Politics average of all polls puts the president approval rating at 52.2 percent.
Gibbs was addressing a question about a comment made by Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-Iowa), who said the president told him he is willing to risk a second term to get a health care overhaul bill approved.
Gibbs said that would be true of most issues.
"I don't know that I've specifically heard him on health care," said Gibbs, "but I have heard the president say that if making tough decisions in getting important things done that Washington has failed to do for decades means that he only lives in this house and makes those decisions for four years, he's quite comfortable," Gibbs told reporters at the White House press briefing.
"The way he approaches this issue, the economy, Afghanistan and Iraq, any of these issues is not in a mode of self preservation, but in a mode of how best -- given all the information out there-- how best to make decisions that he thinks is in the best interest of the American people, not what's in the best interest of his personal career," Gibbs said.