QUIRKY QUESTIONS SPICE UP OBAMA'S E-TOWN HALL

Washington -- President Obama, who used the Internet as a prime driver
of his campaign for office, turned to the Web on Thursday to harness
support for his economic agenda by hosting an electronic town hall
meeting from the White House.

The administration called the "Open for Questions" town hall, which
included several questions posed via YouTube videos, a way of directly
connecting everyday Americans with the president.

"I promised to open up the White House to the American people," Obama
said at that start of the session, adding that the meeting "marks an
important step towards achieving that goal."

Despite the technical elements and the regal venue, the meeting had
the feel of a typical presidential town hall meeting in Elkhart, Ind.,
or even a campaign stop.

Wireless microphone in hand, Obama paced the ornate East Room for well
over an hour answering questions culled from 104,000 sent over the
Internet. Online voters cast more than 3.5 million votes for their
favorite questions, some of which were then posed to the president by
an economic adviser who served as a moderator.

The president took other queries from a live audience of about 100
nurses, teachers, businesspeople and others assembled at the White
House.

Obama was asked about topics such as health care, education, the
economy, the auto industry and housing. In most cases, he used his
answers to tout policies laid out in his $3.6 trillion budget
proposal, his housing bailout plan and the recently enacted economic
stimulus. Several of his responses drew applause from the live audience.

The questions that drew the most votes online had to do with the
budgetary and economic impact of legalizing marijuana. They were
listed on the White House Web site under the topics "green jobs and
energy" and "budget." White House officials later indicated that
interest groups drove up those numbers.

Keeping with the meeting's democratic intent, Obama offered a
lighthearted response to the legalization question.

"I don't know what this says about the online audience," the president
joked before saying, "I don't think that is a good strategy to grow
the economy."

In response to another question, Obama said he will share his
administration's plans for helping ailing automakers within the next
few days.

On job creation, he warned that the dramatic job losses of recent
months are not likely to be reversed before the end of the year. In
response to a question about when jobs that have been moved to foreign
countries may return, the president was not reassuring.

"Not all of these jobs are going to come back," he said. Arguably the
most animated and substantial exchange was between the president and a
longtime teacher from Overbrook High School in Philadelphia who was
seated a few feet behind him. The teacher asked Obama for his
definition of "a charter school" and "an effective teacher."

While Obama quickly dispensed with the first part of the question, he
could not get the teacher to answer when he asked whether in her 15
years on the job she has encountered colleagues who she would not want
to teach her own children.

"My point is that if we've done everything we can to improve teacher
pay and teacher performance and training and development, some people
just aren't meant to be teachers, just like some people aren't meant
to be carpenters, some people aren't meant to be nurses. At some
point, they've got to find a new career," he said.