What is being billed as the first-ever online White House town hall meeting is now taking place, with President Obama in the East Room fielding questions submitted via the Internet. To create a genuine town-hall feel, a live audience, which will ask follow-up questions after the Internet portion of the program is finished, is seated around him.
Ironically, though, most of the exposure the event receives will probably come through the traditional news media. CNN, MSNBC and C-Span 3 are all broadcasting the entire session, and CNBC and Fox News broadcast the first 15 minutes or so. Those combined audiences probably dwarf the number of Americans logging on to WhiteHouse.gov. Of course, given the event’s midday time slot, the vast majority of Americans are probably unaware that it's even taking place.
Obama isn’t making much news so far, and his performance is basically what we’ve come to expect in settings like this—thorough, competent-seeming responses with a little humor and a lot of information, delivered without much electricity. Mainly, Obama has used the questions to repeat and reinforce the same themes that he’s been publicly stressing for weeks, most recently in his press conference on Tuesday night.
For instance, after touting the various benefits of his stimulus program, he made sure to preach patience as well.
“I don’t want people to think that in one or two months we’re going to suddenly see those job increases," he said. "Employment is something that we’re going to have a difficult time [with] for the next several months, maybe through the end of this year.”
The fun part, if there is such a thing, of town halls like this is that there aren't any professional journalists trying to formulate smart-sounding gotcha questions. Certainly, “average” citizens can be just as guilty of playing to the cameras, but their questions can also be refreshing, in part because they aren’t tied to the prevailing news narrative of the week.
A man from California, for example, asked Obama a more philosophical question about health care reform: Why don’t we just create a system modeled after Europe and Canada, where health care is based on need, not ability to pay? In response, Obama spent two minutes reeling off his stock health care reform answer, the words he’s been programmed to speak whenever a questioner—whether it’s a member of the media or a random Joe—asks about the subject. Very little of this usually relates to the actual question.
But at least after that, Obama did acknowledge the question, which was displayed on a giant monitor behind him, and did offer a response. Basically, he said, Americans began receiving health care through their employers under Franklin Roosevelt, and that method is too entrenched now to throw out.
“It may not be the best system if we were designing it from scratch, but that’s what everyone’s accustomed to,” he said. “That’s what everyone’s used to.”
Not the most enlightened response, but something new, at least.
