Obama battles to regain credibility after health care law roll-out

Throughout his career as a national politician, Barack Obama has often benefited from comparisons with others.

Nearing the end of the first year of his second term, he is running mostly against himself - and falling short. The disastrous roll-out of his health care law has put him on the spot in ways he has rarely been before.

The US president, whose reliance on smart people and rational analysis has been at the foundation of his often-insulated governing style, has been forced to admit that he and his team vastly underestimated the challenge of implementing the Affordable Care Act.

His appearance in the White House Briefing Room on Thursday was primarily to announce an administrative fix to quell the furore surrounding the cancellation of health insurance policies for millions of Americans in the individual market.

But it also became an exercise in acknowledging error, in highlighting what he didn't know or misjudged, and in recognising that regaining public confidence will take a long time under the best of circumstances.

Obama admitted the obvious - that his administration "fumbled" the roll-out and that those missteps have changed the public's view of him.