Obama's online town-hall meeting focuses on hard work and hope

I fully expect the next "Law and Order" or "CSI" or "24" episode to feature an embattled president racing against time, trying to boost national economic confidence. It will star, as himself, Barack Obama.

Then, we'll see Obama singing on "American Idol," twirling on "Dancing With the Stars" and dissecting the American psyche while sitting on Oprah's sofa.

In his unprecedented virtual town-hall meeting on whitehouse.gov, Obama strode around the East Room totally at home with his microphone while batting softball questions (what about the nurses, what about the jobless and what about the next generation). A total of 92,925 people submitted questions of the what-are-you-going-to-do-about-education ilk two days after he had held a news conference in the same room. They were the same questions that desperate Americans had asked Obama on the campaign trail.

His goal for this 24/7 media blitz? Reach every American with his message that we must teach our children to compete in high-skills jobs, and we must provide health insurance for everyone, work toward energy independence and, most of all, persuade those recalcitrant Republicans and renegade Democrats in Congress to pass his $3.7 trillion budget.

It's impossible to keep up with the financial twists and turns of this all-consuming recession. The up-again, down-again stock market does not make sense. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is either an all-but-fired nincompoop or a rising star with a head on his shoulders.

Our rage against AIG bonuses is either attributable to inchoate mob rage or reasoned reaction to incomprehensible greed. Capitalism is either dead or just taking a break. Obama is either recklessly spending money we don't have (and never will have) or is carefully preparing the nation's infrastructure for the future. More tax cuts are either essential or good money after bad.

The new GOP budget plan is — surprise, surprise — a return to the myopic Bush era of more tax cuts for the rich and more spending on defense and less on everything else.

If there was one overarching message out of Obama's online town-hall meeting (aside from the disproportional demand that Obama weigh in on whether legalized marijuana could boost the economy; he said "no"), it is that he holds no hope that this recession will end this year. Even if the picture is brightening, job creation and housing starts won't begin in earnest for many, many months.