Obama on-line (with America) live-blog

by Frank James

1:00 pm -- A colleague makes a good point. What town-hall meeting isn't a snooze fest. Most are but there can be some good moments, like when that homeless woman in Florida caused Obama to nearly lose it for a nanosecond before he regained his cool composure. Real town halls have an element of unpredictability. There was that McCain townhall where the woman accused Obama of being an Arab. That sort of thing.

This was just plain boring and too predictable. The same colleague says the problem is less the format than the president. He's a policy wonk who doesn't turn to humor very often. He also doesn't present the opportunity for entertaining malaprops that Bush did. So there wasn't that potential for entertainment either.

Anyway, let's hope the White House never darkens our Internet door with one of these Internet town hall meetings again.

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12:48 pm -- The last question is on health care again. Obama uses it to talk about pre-existing conditions and how his mother who died of ovarian cancer was told by her insurance company that she had a pre-existing condition and denied. It's a story he has told before but it's one a lot of people can relate to. "Any reform of the health care system has to address this issue," the president says. Obama says insurers have made progress since they favor mandated insurance now where everyone must be covered. Doesn't know if it's the best idea but at least it's out there.

It ends with Obama saying "thanks for paying attention. We need you to keep paying attention." Hey, I'm paid to pay attention. But for anyone who isn't, what a snooze fest.

The White House hyped this format as novel. But it really wasn't all that different than a regular town hall meeting. The Internet aspect of it really added little to nothing.

It would have been better if the president engaged in a live chat and really mixed it up with people online. That vould've been really interesting, especially if he had taken questions from critics.

But what we just saw was far too scripted with virtually no give and take. It gave the illusion of interactivity. But some of use were expecting more.

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12:45 pm -- Obama puts the teacher on the spot, kind of. "You've probably met some teachers you wouldn't put your kids in front of," he says, which gets a laugh. We have to make it easier to get rid of bad teachers is his point.

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12:42 pm -- Finally news. Obama talked with Bill Gates yesterday on education using technology for feedback.

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12:40 pm -- A teacher from Philadelphia gets Obama to give a shout out to Overbrook High School. She asks about charter schools. How are they defined? Obama gives her a definition. I have to believe only the Obamaphiles are sticking with this. It's not very interesting. Then he gets into a lengthy discussion on education.

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12:37 pm -- Another military veteran who was on the Obama campaign talks taxes, that his business income is imputed to him which prevents him plowing money back into the business. Obama says he wants to relieve the burden on small businesses but that as a business grows, the tax burden rises. Then he offers up the capital gains tax cut that was part of the stimulus package which doesn't kick in five years but it's better than nothing.

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12:31 pm -- A nurse asks to be at the table of health reform. Obama says they were part of the summit and will be at the table. "I'm biased towards nurses. I just like nurses" he says. Tells a personal story about how when his kids were born, it was nurses who did all the work. Same when Sasha had meningitis. Now talks about the shortage of nurses because of the bad pay and hours and that nurse professors are even more poorly paid then nurses themselves. Looks like he's locked up the nurses vote.

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12:30 pm -- A Navy veteran and small businessman asks about the bundling of federal contracts which makes it difficult for small businesses to compete. Obama explains the arcana of federal contracting procedures to the audience. Small businesses sometimes offer better goods and services on a small piece but can't compete with the larger contractors. Obama says his administration is "looking for every opportunity to unbundle" but sometimes you need economies of scale. Says the big contractors make so much money they can get those accursed lobbyists to keep getting more business.

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12:26 pm -- Obama says he knows it's not popular to provide help to automakers but suggests that he will help them with additional financial aid but that he's not going to throw bad money after good, or good money after bad, whatever.

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12:24 pm -- A reporter who covered Obama during the campaign tells me that this reminds him of the gazillion Obama town halls he attended during the presidential campaign except it was even less interesting since Obama's staff and presumably Obama had access to the Internet questions beforehand.

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12:22 pm -- Obama now gets questions from the live audience. The first is a woman who asks about the auto industry and what he can do to help. Obama makes a little news, saying that within the next few days he plans to make an announcement about what hsi administration will do. But he says he's not going to give a lot of details.

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12:19 pm -- Gets another video question from three young women who ask what he's going to do to make college more affordable and say "thank you, Mr. President" in their sing-songy, teen-agey way. Obama uses this as a way to get into his national service plan which would give aid to students who give some national service. Then he talks about his proposal to take college loans away from the private sector in a big way which will free up more money for loans themselves instead of subsidies to the private sector.

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12:12 pm -- Obama gets a question about Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and a strategy to ease them back into civilian life. He mentions that he was at Arlington National Cemetery yesterday and saw a veteran who was at Pearl Harbor. He talked about how the veteran was fired on by "the planes coming in" and shot down "a plane." It's interesting that he was able to talk about this without mentioning the Japanese. Then he talks about all that has to be done for veterans including the additional funding his administration proposes.

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12:10 pm -- Obama stops to joke that the most voted on question was is legalizing pot a strategy for growing the economy, so to speak. "Don't know what that says about the on-line audience," he says. "No, I don't think that's a strategy" he said.

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12:06 pm -- Obama says he wants universal health care but "whether we do it the way European countries have, that's another question." Explains what happens in Canada and England. He asks for a show of hands about how many people have health insurance through their employers and most of the hands go up. Explains that it was an accident of history that explains how that happened, FDR and World War II etc. Adds that he doesn't want to scrap the system but modify it. "My expectation is I will have a health care bill to sign by the end of the year. That's my expectation."

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12:04 PM -- Obama gets a health care question. He gets his first applause during the actual town hall when he says "Now is the time to reform the health care system, not 20 years from now... now."

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12:01 pm -- Obama is explaining to the audience that unemployment is a lagging indicator, that once the economy turns around it will be a while before employment starts going up. He wants to make sure people are patient with him. Bernstein says it took many months for unemployment to come down after the last recession.

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11:58 am -- A video question from a woman in Georgia about what Obama can do to bring jobs back to the U.S. Obama uses this question to say the reason it's so important to get the financial sector back on track is to help Main Street. It's not just about helping Wall Street. Obama talks a little bit about his industrial policy which is about creating higher value jobs like making wind turbines, not the low paying, low skill jobs. "The whole goal is to create new jobs, which is why energy is so promising."

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11:53 am -- The second question is on homeownership. Obama talks about how his administration's efforts are making more refinancings possible. Is it lunchtime yet?

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11: 52 am -- So far, I'm not bowled over by this format. It seems like it's really an excuse to allow Obama to have a town hall without leaving home. Hey, maybe this is really a presidential form of telecommuting.

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11:49 am -- Now we begin with the first question. It's on education, calling it woefully inadequate. How will Obama restore it. Obama calls it a great question and says education made him what he was. He goes into his standard answer on education, talking about decrepit schools and the outdated agrarian schedule schools still hew to as well as faulty curricula and teachers. He calls for reform. Wants more early childhood education, etc. Let's pay teachers more money, he says. Anyone who has heard Obama speak on education at least once in the last two years has heard this spiel.

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11:45 am -- Obama is essentially reprising his opening remarks of the other night's press conference. The man knows how to stay on message. He's relentlessly disciplined. He's pitching his budget and his agenda. And the persistence thing.

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11:43 am -- The president appears to be using the straight-ahead TelePrompter again which allows him to look ahead into the camera straight on instead of the two screens on either side of the podium which made him swivel his head back and forth. The straight-ahead look is much better than the head swiveling which makes me dizzy.

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11:41 am -- Obama enters the room. Says he's thrilled and that he's redeeming a campaign promise to open the White House to the American people. Now he goes into his talking points about how Washington treats politics like a game and that "This isn't about me, this is about you." He's on auto pilot now.

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11:37 am -- Jared Bernstein, an economist who's an aide to Vice President Biden, makes the introduction. Says the topic of the day is the economy. The "open for questions" format means to allow people across the country to reach the president, Bernstein says. It's a gimmick but it's innovative.

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11:36 am -- Now we can see the stately East Room of the White House with an assemblage of people. This is a far cry from blogging alone at home in one's underwear.

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11:33 am -- The White House site says 104,132 questions have been submitted by 92,925 people. Meanwhile 3.6 million votes have been cast.

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11:32 am -- The live-stream from the White House has started. We're looking at the White House medallion logo which is best known as the backdrop in the White House press briefing room.
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We'll be live blogging President Barack Obama's on-line town hall today which is scheduled to start in just minutes. Of course, this would require my laptop to finish booting up, which may or may not happen.