US President Barack Obama has urged Democratic senators not to 'jam through' an ambitious healthcare reform bill, but to wait for a new Republican lawmaker to take his seat.
"Here's one thing I know and I just want to make sure that this is off the table: The Senate certainly shouldn't try to jam anything through until Scott Brown is seated," Obama told America's ABC on Wednesday.
"The people of Massachusetts spoke. He's got to be part of that process."
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He was speaking just hours after Brown defeated Democratic candidate Martha Coakley in the race to replace the late Edward Kennedy in the 100-seat US Senate, costing Obama's party its thin 60-vote super-majority.
The shock defeat in elections for a seat held for almost five decades by the liberal lion, Kennedy, has left the White House reeling a year to the day since Obama's historic inauguration.
But Obama admitted he felt he had lost touch with the American people since his stunning victory in the November 2008 presidential race over Republican rival John McCain.
He said he felt he had made a mistake by focusing on policy issues instead seeking to maintain his connection with the American people.
"That I do think is a mistake of mine," Obama said.
"If there's one thing that I regret this year is that we were so busy just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises
that were in front of us that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are," Obama told ABC News.
"I think the assumption was if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or if we're making a good rational decision here, then people will get it."
Instead, the president said the American people ended up with a "feeling of remoteness and detachment" from the policy makers in Washington.
But the US leader, elected America's first African-American president thanks to his sweeping promise of change, said he felt he could do a better job in his second year in office.
"I think that I can do a better job of that, and partly because I do believe that we're in a stronger position now than we were a year ago," he said.
