WHITE HOUSE

QUICK TAKE: Obama: 'Deep Down ... There's a Laziness in Me'

Updated: December 23, 2011 | 12:38 p.m.
December 23, 2011 | 8:44 a.m.

The personality trait President Obama says he most deplores in himself and others is not exactly one you'd expect from, presumably, one of the busiest people in the world: laziness.

"You're lazy?" Barbara Walters incredulously asked Obama, sitting alongside the first lady, in an interview scheduled to air on ABC on Friday night but previewed ahead of time.

"It's interesting.... Deep down underneath all the work I do, I think there's a laziness in me," Obama said. "It's probably from growing up in Hawaii, and it's sunny outside. Sitting on the beach."

Obama then added the trait he truly most dislikes in others is cruelty. "I can't stand cruel people," he said.

Michelle Obama did not hesitate when Walters asked the Obamas what they would be if they were to die and come back as a person or a thing. "I would want to be Bo," she said of her Portuguese water dog.

She clarified she doesn't want to be just any pooch. "Not a dog, but Bo," she said of the dog who recently went shopping at PetSmart. "Oh, god, he's got it good."

The president, however, said he doesn't have it so easy amid all the jabs his two daughters and wife take at him. "I tease him a lot [about] any and every thing," Michelle Obama said of her husband, who interjected with an example: "My ears."

"His dancing, his singing. He's just fun to tease," Michelle Obama said. "The girls love to do it, too."

"I'm basically the straight man for the Obama family," the president said. 

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