Obama loses his "cool"; with his glib dismissal of pot legalization, the president looks less like the man, and more like The Man.

• Author: Welch, Matt
• Position: From the Top - Barack Obama

WHEN THE GENERATION of Americans under the age of 30 gets around to realizing that this handsome young president might not be nearly as cool as they'd hoped, it won't be hard to affix a date on when the milk began to sour. It was March 26, 2009, when Barack Obama conducted a live town hall press conference featuring questions submitted online.

Near the beginning of this hip and mildly groundbreaking interaction, the president said this: "We took votes about which questions were gonna be asked.... Three point five million people voted. I have to say that there was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high, uh, and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve, uh, the economy and job creation. And, uh (chuckles), uh, I don't know what this says about the online audience (laughs), but I just want--I don't want people to think that--this was a fairly popular question; we want to make sure that it was answered. Uh, the answer is, no, I don't think that is a good strategy to grow our economy."

The live audience laughed and applauded. The kids online? Not so much.

"Way to discredit a lot of the 'online audience' who got you elected, Mr. President," wrote one commenter on the social news-aggregating website Digg, where Obama's dismissal was heavily criticized. "Enjoy your approval rating now, Mr. President, I think you just lost a bunch of help," wrote another. A third Diggster treated legalization with a seriousness (if not grammaticalness) that Obama failed to muster: "To me this is justa common sense issue, legalize Marijuana, decriminalize drug use, thereby crippling drug lords, creating a safe and in the open means to distribute cannabis, give the economy a shot in the arm, and propel snack food sales through the roof. I know the man has a lot on his plate, but seriously this is not justa pot head issue, and it ain't cute that folks are rotting in prisons for cultivating and smoking a ***** plant."

No, it ain't cute at all.

Scratch a young Obama voter and you won't necessarily find someone who likes bailouts or cares about financial market regulations one way or another. Instead you're likely to hear about how the awful Republicans wage wars, bait gays and racial minorities, and basically act like a bunch of mean old white men. Party membership and voting are frequently more about group identity than philosophical orientation about the proper role of government. (For a wonderful exploration of the dissonances this can...