From his first answer ("Look, I was trying to find a show that Michelle actually watched . . . "), Obama sought to project openness, cool, and faith in the cohering power of a shared Americanness.
But thanks to the world we live in, with new media and new messages instant by instant, the political landscape is changing fast - for politicians and voters alike, and all are scrambling to keep up.
That's why Obama went on the show that now dubs itself "Red, White, and View." What viewers saw was the TV president, the Internet and YouTube president, moving fast not to be left behind.
Obama said it himself: "These things change very quickly."
G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, lays out in an e-mail how quickly: "His job performance [rating] dropped 20 points from Jan. '09-Jan. '10, and nothing he has done . . . ha[s] moved the performance meter one way or the other very much. He remains about 47-48 percent positive, with virtually no change this year at all."
Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, says there's no question: Instant, all-pervasive media have contributed to the volatility of the electorate. "Because technology changes so fast," he says, "politicians have to change fast to keep up, and it means the audience changes rapidly, too."
But news events great and small - oil slick, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Shirley Sherrod, Afghanistan, WikiLeaks, jobs, orders for durable goods, polls and more polls - tear at that shared image. And the electorate shifts shape: Many of those who voted for Obama now, as Thompson puts it, "don't seem to be particularly fond of the message."
