President Obama is attempting to drum up support for his re-election campaign amidst a slumping economy. In an appearance on the Tom Joyner radio program on Tuesday, Obama said the severity of the financial crisis had limited his administration’s ability to respond.

President Obama: “Look, there are no magic bullets, because what we went through was the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and typically after financial recession, financial crises like this, it takes a long time for the patient to heal. This is a situation where the economy essentially had a heart attack, and the patient lived, and the patient is getting better, but it’s getting better very slowly. So, we don’t have magic bullets, but what we do have, I think, is the capacity to do some things right now that would make a big difference.”

Earlier in the interview, President Obama also commented on the unveiling of the new memorial to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on the National Mall. Obama cited King’s work beyond civil rights to also seek “economic justice.”

President Obama: “When Dr. King gave the 'I Have a Dream' speech, that was a march for jobs and justice, not just justice. And in the last part of his life, when he went down to Memphis, that was all about sanitation workers saying, 'I am a man,' and looking for economic justice and dealing with poverty. And so, it’s not enough for us to just remember the sanitized versions of what Dr. King stood for; he made a real call for us to dig deep and be thinking about our fellow citizens and people around the world who are in desperate need and figuring out how we can help them.”