CNN's Erickson Calls Obama “A Jerk” For Proposing To Improve On A “Great County”

Following an interview President Obama gave to a television station in Orlando, Florida, in which Obama praised the United States as “a great, great country that had gotten a little soft” and talked about things that can be done to improve upon the best system in the world, CNN contributor Erick Erickson took to Twitter to call him “a jerk.”

Here are Obama's full comments from the interview with WESH anchor Jim Payne:

OBAMA: One of the reasons that I ran for president was that wages, incomes had flatlined at the same time that costs had gone up. I think that people had thought that opportunities had become more constricted for the next generation. And that's why making sure that we're revamping our education system; making sure that we've got world-class infrastructure; investing in basic science, and research, and technology; making sure that we are moving manufacturing back to the United States and that we are being tough with our trading partners -- making sure that they are not taking advantage of us -- I mean, there are a lot of things that we can do.

The way I think about it is, is that this is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft, and we didn't have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades. We need to get back on track, but I wouldn't trade our position with any other country on Earth. We still have the best universities, the best scientists, and best workers in the world. We still have the most dynamic economic system in the world. So we just need to bring all those things together.

Obama sure comes off as an anti-American president here, doesn't he? He points out that the United States is a great country that could stand to be even greater with some improvement and he gets attacked not only by Erickson, but by The Drudge Report and Glenn Beck's The Blaze as well.

In her book, America by Heart, Sarah Palin described the United States as a great country that also has “flaws.” Would Erickson call Palin a “jerk” for acknowledging that?