Obama Loses His "Cool"; With His Glib Dismissal of Pot Legalization, The President Looks Less Like the Man, And More Like the Man (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."