Obama: racism not at root of criticism

US President Barack Obama does not think racism is "the overriding issue" in the fierce debate on health care, but that tempers are rising over the proper role of government, according to interviews to be broadcast today.

"Are there people out there who don't like me because of race? I'm sure there are. That's not the overriding issue here," Obama insisted in an excerpt of an interview to be broadcast on the CNN show State of the Union.

The US leader, in a media blitz to shore up popular support for health care reform, is talking to all five major Sunday news shows after commandeering prime-time television earlier this month with a major address to Congress on the issue.

Obama has been pushed to weigh in on the controversial issue of race after former president Jimmy Carter claimed racism was driving demonstrations and rhetoric on the president's health care reform plans and spending policy.

"The overwhelming part of the American population" is much more concerned with how health care changes will affect them, Obama stressed, according to an interview excerpt released by ABC News.

The "biggest driver" for the more intense opposition to his administration's proposals, Obama told the network's This Week programme, is more likely to be from people who are "passionate about the idea of whether government can do anything right".

The president similarly told NBC's Meet the Press programme that it is an argument "that's gone on for the history of this republic - and that is, what's the right role of government? How do we balance freedom with our need to look after one another?"

There has been a long-standing debate in the United States on big power plays from the White House, Obama told CNN, which is "usually that much more fierce during times of transition or when presidents are trying to bring about big changes". The vitriolic attacks of the 1930s on then US president Franklin Roosevelt "are pretty similar to the things that are said about me - he was a communist, he was a socialist," Obama said in an excerpt released last Friday by CNN.

"Things that were said about (former US president) Ronald Reagan when he was trying to reverse some of the New Deal programmes were pretty vicious as well," he added.

Obama's spokesman Robert Gibbs moved last week to calm temperatures after Carter said much of the criticism levelled at Obama, America's first black president, was the result of racism.

"The president does not believe that the criticism comes based on the colour of his skin," Gibbs said.

In an interview with NBC on Tuesday, 84-year-old Carter had said he thought that "an overwhelming proportion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, he's African-American".