Obama Stays on [Adjective] at Town Hall - White House Correspondents Insider

The ins and outs of President Obama’s televised town hall meeting are as confusing as the impatience in the crowd. Sponsored by Georgetown University and filmed at the BET Studios in Washington, DC, this Conversation with the President kept the same on-edge tone that his previous town hall last month on the economy.

The New York Times cites Obama as being on the “defensive” while essentially bullet pointing the major questions of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal, the economy and immigration. The town hall began on the nature of health care and leapt from point to point as the crowd gathered seemed almost giddy with demanding impossibly fast responses to issues spanning the last decade.

Politico runs the age card with their coverage citing poll numbers:

Just 44 percent of college students approve of the job Obama is doing, while 27 percent disapprove of his job performance, according to a new Associated Press-mtvU poll – down from a 60 percent approval rating in May 2009.

This is also days after the Times Magazine’s massive “The Education of President Obama” profile. The buried lede and overarching concept? “While proud of his record, Obama has already begun thinking about what went wrong — and what he needs to do to change course for the next two years.”

If there was a real tone to the town hall, it’d be this: during a mid-term election when news outlets compare the 2008 numbers of a presidential candidate to gubernatorial, congressional and senatorial candidates as a symbol of “declining popularity” and “proof that Obama is in trouble,” it becomes a question if there’s really anything going on at all?