Hurricane Sandy has robbed President Obama of "a bunch of campaign time," but senior officials said that the president will be able to recover in the final week of the election.

"We're obviously going to lose a bunch of campaign time, but that's as it has to be," said senior strategist David Axelrod. "We'll try and make it up on the back end," he added, confident that it won't undermine the presient's eventual reelection.

The campaign took credit for taking the president off the trail and returning him to the White House to man the storm desk. During a conference call Monday with reporters, campaign manager Jim Messina said, "on his schedule, we did not do the Florida event, we brought him back. We have taken down tomorrow, we are not going to do Wisconsin and we're going to go day by day."

Axelrod also said the president is in touch at the White House with his storm team, including FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security.

Washington, he said, is where the president belongs. "The president's focus is on the storm and governing the country."