In an interview to raise his new memoir, Obama said that 'puzzling out' the most significant political issues was 'professionally really satisfying' - while underlining that he did not miss 'having to wear a tie every day'.
'If I could make an arrangement where I had a stand-in, a frontman or frontwoman, and they had an earpiece in and I was just in my basement in my sweats looking through the stuff, then I could sort of deliver the lines but somebody else was doing all the talking and ceremony, then I'd be fine with that because I found the work fascinating,' Obama said.
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The pair also swiped at Donald Trump, with Colbert explaining that Trump had shown that 'there's a whole bunch of stuff you don't actually have to do' and Obama responding: 'Who knew'?
Disciplining Trump for his administration of the job, Colbert asked: 'Are there a few things that he chucked out and you went, oh, if only I'd known I didn't have to do that'?
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Obama replied that 'I think there's a lot' - including the job of 'following the Constitution'.
Describing the 'fascinating' job of the presidency, he explained: 'Even on my worst days, I found puzzling out these big, complicated, difficult issues - especially if you were working with some great people - to be professionally really satisfying'.
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Obama is constitutionally prevented from trying a third term after his two election victories in 2008 and 2012.
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While there has usually been speculation about his wife Michelle Obama running for office, she has beforehand said there was 'zero chance'.
The former president is promoting his memoir in the wake of the November election in which his understudy Joe Biden stopped Trump's bid for a second term.
In the second part of his Colbert interview, which aired last night, Obama compared Trump's rejection to concede to a Super Bowl in which the losing side insists that 'field goals aren't worth three' or 'that wasn't really a touchdown'.
'Or Hugo Chavez kept blocking the field goals from the grave,' interjected Colbert, referring to Trump surrogates' outlandish claims that the late Venezuelan strongman was implicated in a plot to rig the election.
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Obama added that: 'We've all been watching. And I guess if you had the other team just refuse to acknowledge it, and you had half the league say we're not sure it's true, you'd have a similar controversy.
'But when that starts happening, the game itself breaks down. And in this case it's not a game, it's our democracy.’
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