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 President Obama blames the press for creating the image that he's aloof and disconnected from the rest of Washington, insisting in a new interview that he's just more interested in spending time with his family than in exchanging pleasantries with strangers. 
 
 "My suspicion is that this whole critique has to do with the fact that I don’t go to a lot of Washington parties and, as a consequence, the Washington press corps maybe just doesn’t feel like I’m in the mix enough with them, and they figure, well, if I’m not spending time with them, I must be cold and aloof," Obama said in an interview with Time Magazine released Thursday. 
 
 "The fact is, I’ve got a 13-year-old and 10-year-old daughter. And so, no, Michelle and I don’t do the social scene, because as busy as we are, we have a limited amount of time, and we want to be good parents at a time that’s vitally important for our kids." 
 
 Jodi Kantor touches on the same theme in "The Obamas," published last week, which depicts the first couple as more interested in spending time with their family and inner circle than with in schmoozing with Washington's power players. 
 
 And, Obama said in the interview with Time, it's not like socializing with congressional Republicans has done anything to boost his legislation and attempts at bipartisanship. 
 
 "In terms of Congress, the reason we’re not getting enough done right now is because you’ve got a Congress that is deeply ideological and sees a political advantage in not getting stuff done," he said. "John Boehner and I get along fine. We had a great time playing golf together. That’s not the issue. The problem was that no matter how much golf we played or no matter how much we yukked it up, he had trouble getting his caucus to go along with doing the responsible thing on a whole bunch of issues over the past year." 
 
 Brendan Buck, Boehner's press secretary, challenged Obama's assessment. "The problem hasn't been getting our team to do what is responsible. It has been that the president honestly believes his agenda is responsible, and we -- led by the speaker -- know it's actually making the economy worse." ||||| Several White House advisers said they expect that perception to start to change, in part from political necessity as the president forges new alliances with the Republican Congress. Already, in the lame duck session, he found common cause on taxes with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) - who is equally uninterested in schmoozing and would rather get down to business, one of his aides said. 
 
 Yet in numerous interviews, donors and outside consultants, along with lawmakers in both parties, complained about what they described as Obama's arm's-length treatment. They did so on condition of anonymity in order to speak freely about the president's personality. 
 
 Obama rarely makes a spontaneous phone call, as President Bill Clinton would, or stays well past the dessert course because he is engrossed in conversation. His social encounters are highly scheduled, and to participants they sometimes feel forced unless they are also about work. "He's disdainful of things that make people feel connected to him," one Democratic leader said. "People want to feel like they have a relationship, and he stridently resists." 
 
 It is a characteristic that dates back to his early adulthood, at least. On the first page of his autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," Obama describes himself as a 21-year-old loner who was "prone to see other people as unnecessary distractions" and to avoid excessive social contact in his New York neighborhood. 
 
 "If the talk began to wander, or cross the border into familiarity, I would soon find reason to excuse myself," Obama wrote in the 1995 memoir. "I had grown too comfortable in my solitude, the safest place I knew." 
 
 The Republican lawmaker said Obama "always seems a little uncomfortable" in social settings, unlike his two predecessors. 
 
 This year's White House holiday party for members of Congress was no exception, he said. Where Vice President Biden was chatting up members - telling jokes and slapping his former congressional colleagues on the back - and Michelle Obama was "great with kids, and humoring politicians," her husband seemed less enthralled by having guests sidle up to him. In most cases, Obama spent only a moment or two with each at the photo line. 
 
 Obama did, of course, have thousands of photos to endure throughout 20 holiday parties at the White House, making the encounters necessarily brief and awkward. At the same time, he literally rushed to one of them - the one he held for his staff - leaving Clinton behind in the White House briefing room taking questions from reporters. 
 
 The Clinton comparison may be part of Obama's difficulty. Although Clinton was sometimes social to the point of being unproductive, he was able to forge relationships with Republican leaders who took power halfway through his first term. That did not, of course, prevent his impeachment trial. But it left members who personally encountered Clinton feeling that they were worthy of personal attention and that the president remembered them. Donors sometimes felt as if they were practically family. 
 
 Today's gripes are largely a result of the change in atmosphere for Democrats. "Those complaints are fundamentally from people that were spoiled by Bill Clinton - both political people and the donor community, people like me that have 42 pictures of themselves with Bill Clinton," California Democratic consultant Bill Carrick said. "I don't know that it's a reality that any president is going to duplicate. 
 
 In fact, President George W. Bush was no more fond of cultivating donors or new friends than his successor is, and he tended to retire to the residence at an even earlier hour. But what Bush lacked in enthusiasm for late-night events he made up for in nicknames and jokes. Bush also knew how to win certain men's hearts: He assiduously cultivated Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, inviting his family for a movie at the White House, naming a Justice Department building for Kennedy's brother Robert and hosting a black-tie dinner in honor of his sister Eunice. 
 
 People who have worked with Obama acknowledged he is not - and will never be - the kind of jocular creature Bush was, nor overly social as Clinton was. If he is branching out now, either with donors or Republicans, it is to achieve specific goals rather than forge new but vague alliances. 
 
 Another veteran Democratic consultant who knows both presidents said that whether Obama relishes it or not, he should be nudged in a more expansive direction in the coming months. Onetime Clinton chief of staff Leon Panetta "walled off time for Clinton not to talk to people. Obama needs the opposite," she said. 
 
 Now, Obama needs his chief of staff, Pete Rouse, to do the opposite, the consultant said. "He needs Pete to say, 'You're playing golf with Boehner at 3 - get in the car.' " 
 
 kornbluta@washpost.com Staff writer Karen Tumulty contributed to this report.
– President Obama isn't aloof, he says—it's just that he and Michelle don't tend to paint the town red. "My suspicion is that this whole critique has to do with the fact that I don’t go to a lot of Washington parties and, as a consequence, the Washington press corps maybe just doesn’t feel like I’m in the mix enough with them," he tells Time in an interview, noted by Politico. "And they figure, well, if I’m not spending time with them, I must be cold and aloof." "Michelle and I don’t do the social scene, because as busy as we are, we have a limited amount of time, and we want to be good parents at a time that’s vitally important for our kids." The Obamas' social life has nothing to do with his clashes with Congress, he notes. "John Boehner and I get along fine. The problem was that no matter how much golf we played or no matter how much we yukked it up, he had trouble getting his caucus to go along with doing the responsible thing on a whole bunch of issues over the past year." Click to read the extensive interview.