Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) made two stops on his apology tour Monday to walk back comments he had made last month calling Obama "one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times."
"If I had to do it over again I'd have parsed my words a little more carefully," Issa said in an interview with CNN's "Situation Room," hours after making a similar correction on ABC's "Good Morning America."
The congressman, now set to become be the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in the next Congress, made the original comments in what he described as an impromptu moment of foolishness during a radio interview with Rush Limbaugh last month.
"Do I think the president is personally corrupt, no," Issa told CNN. "I should never have implied that, or created that in a quick statement on a radio call-in."
But Issa, who spoke aggressively Monday about launching hundreds of oversight investigations, has lately been forced to fold to other criticism as well.
After claiming that the commotion caused by an alleged pre-primary White House job offer to Joe Sestak was tantamount to an "impeachable" offense, Issa later said he wouldn't mount a probe into the matter.
Issa then altered his plan again, however, saying that he would examine similar violations by the Bush administration as well, before scrapping the idea altogether.
At the end of his about-face on CNN Monday, Issa departed with a less confrontational tone:
From CNN's report:
"Our committee is supposed to be about finding ways to - creating reform, making government do its job, and do it within a smaller budget, not a larger budget," Issa said, adding that he plans to continue bipartisan initiatives that were part of the committee's agenda while Democrats were in power.