U.S. President Barack Obama says he does not think Americans are “better off” economically now than three years ago when he was elected.

With the American economy struggling and high unemployment, Mr. Obama said in an Internet interview Monday that he “absolutely” considers himself an underdog against the as-yet unselected Republican presidential nominee in the 2012 election. But he said voters would eventually ask which candidate has a “better vision for the future” before picking the country's president for a four-year term starting early 2013.

The president, a Democrat, acknowledged to ABC News correspondent George Stephanopoulos that his relations with opposition Republican lawmakers “have not been good over the last several months.”

But he said that he thinks American voters will realize that every step of the way he tried to engage political opponents and each time – in his words – “all we got from them was nothing.”

Mr. Obama touched on a wide range of subjects in the White House interview.

He described the al-Qaida terrorist network as still dangerous. But he said that U.S. attacks killing key al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the 2001 attacks on the U.S., have left the organization “decimated.”

The president said it's going to be very hard for al-Qaida to mount another attack like the decade-old September 11 assault that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Mr. Obama, celebrating his 19th wedding anniversary on Monday with his wife Michelle, praised her “steady drumbeat” on insisting they make time together to care for their daughters, Sasha and Malia. He described his daughters as a constant source of joy and sustenance and said he makes sure to give them “space to make mistakes and be teenagers.”

Stephanopoulos, conducting the interview for ABC and the Internet site Yahoo!, said a new poll shows that a majority of Americans think Mr. Obama will be defeated in the 2012 presidential election.

Challengers seeking to oust incumbent U.S. presidents often ask voters whether they are better off than before the president was elected. Asked how he would answer that question, Mr. Obama quickly acknowledged that Americans are not. He said the jobless rate — now at 9.1 percent, with 14 million unemployed — is “still too high.”

As he had earlier in the day, Mr. Obama said Congress needs to pass his job creation legislation to help the country's lagging economic growth.