Ahead of the UN and G20 summits this week, Obama also denied "paranoid" Russian objections had dictated his decision to abandon a US missile shield in Eastern Europe and said North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il seemed "healthy" and in "control."
The president's media offensive came a day before he is due to head to New York for his debut United Nations general assembly as president, and the G20 economic crisis summit of developed and developing nations later in the week in Pittsburgh.
As allegations of fraud mount following Afghanistan's elections in August, complicating Obama's attempt to maintain failing public support for the eight-year war, the president made his most expansive comments yet on the conduct of the polls.
"It did not go as smoothly as I think we would have hoped, and there are some serious issues in terms of how the election was conducted in some parts of the country," Obama said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Obama added on CNN that the world would have to "wait and see" if reported widespread fraud had a substantial impact on the election, which President Hamid Karzai appears to have won.
The president also weighed in on the raging debate about a widely expected request by the US military for more troops in Afghanistan, as he digests war commander General Stanley McChrystal's classified report on US strategy.
"We're going to test whatever resources we have against our strategy, which is if by sending young men and women into harm's way, we are defeating Al-Qaeda," he said on ABC.
"(If) that can be shown to a skeptical audience -- namely me, somebody who is always asking hard questions about deploying troops -- then we will do what's required to keep the American people safe," Obama said.
The president also gave his most detailed assessment yet of the priceless intelligence brought back by former president Bill Clinton from his mission to Pyongyang in August to win the release of two US journalists.
The president told CNN he had been interested by Clinton's assessment that North Korean leader Kim, with whom Washington is locked in a dispute over nuclear weapons, was "pretty healthy and in control."
"President Clinton had a chance to see him close up and have conversations with him," Obama added.
"There's no doubt that this is somebody who I think for a while people thought was slipping away. He's reasserted himself."
Speculation has surrounded Kim's health for months amid signs he suffered a stroke last year and was preparing the succession for his son Kim Jong-Un.
Days before meeting Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the United Nations, the president also denied that his decision to shelve a plan by the former Bush administration for a missile shield in Europe was based on Moscow's objections.
"Russia had always been paranoid about this, but George Bush was right, this wasn't a threat to them," Obama told CBS show "Face the Nation."
"The Russians don't make determinations about what our defense posture is," he said.
"If the by-product of it is that the Russians feel a little less paranoid and are now willing to work more effectively with us to deal with threats like ballistic missiles from Iran or nuclear development in Iran, you know, then that's a bonus."
Obama also made an attempt to bolster his push to pass his top priority health care initiative, amid opposition from Republicans and even reservations among some fellow Democrats in Congress.
He dismissed the view that the furor over his plan was a symptom of racism.
"Anytime there's a president who is proposing big changes that seem to (involve) the size of government, that gets everybody's juices flowing and sometimes you get some pretty noisy debate.
"This isn't a radical plan. This isn't grafting a single payer model onto the United States. It's simply trying to deal with what everybody acknowledges is a big problem."
On the economy, ahead of the G20 summit, Obama warned that although there are signs that growth may soon resume in the United States, there is little evidence of better news on unemployment.
"I want to be clear, that probably the jobs picture is not going to improve considerably and it could even get a little bit worse over the next couple of months," Obama, who already has predicted the national jobless rate will hit 10 percent, told CNN.
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