The session was part of the administration's week-long follow up to the State of the Union Address.
Comprised of questions submitted and voted for online, the president spent 45 minutes answering questions ranging from the weighty - challenges of White House policies in Iraq and Afghanistan - to the frivolous, such as the gift gift he would give first lady Michelle Obama for Valentine's Day.
Asked about the nation's decades-long war on drugs and whether he backed legalizing marijuana - a question which garnered more than 13,000 votes, making it the most popular - Obama said the question is "an entirely legitimate topic for debate." Still, "I don't favor legalization," he said.
"I am in favor of thinking more about drugs as a public health problem," the president said.
Other questions fell more neatly into the education-and-green innovation category, the White House's narrative for the week. That gave Obama had an opportunity to reprise his call for changes to the country's energy policy, packaged in a timely imperative to create the "jobs of the future."
"We've got to invest in innovation, to invest in research and development," Obama said. The answer echoed the central theme of his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, when he called for the creation of an "energy standard," requiring a proportion of the nation's energy to come from renewable sources.
Obama participated in a similar online Q-and-A session after his first State of the Union address in 2010, and shortly after taking office in 2009. The reprisal of the electronic format, even in the midst of a major retooling of his administration's messaging strategy, is an indication that the White House has been satisfied with the results.
"The president looks at something like YouTube as sort of an online town hall meeting," said press secretary Robert Gibbs. "Obviously a number of us use different types of social media like Twitter to communicate what the government is doing to the people in this country."
Gibbs's own innovation "1st Q," where he periodically takes questions on Twitter, has drawn praise in some quarters as well as criticism. He has insisted that the use of social media has enhanced his administration's transparency, but critics have begged to differ.
"Twitter is a vehicle for information; a means to an end," Roy Cooper, of the Heritage Foundation, wrote in a blog post. "Its use is by no means synonymous with releasing more information in a timely manner to allow for a more informed electorate."
This week, administration officials have held online question and answer sessions, jointly broadcast on the White House website and on YouTube. The format allows cabinet officials and senior administration officials to lay out more policy details from the president's State of the Union address.
The idea, Gibbs says, is to talk to Americans directly "about the decisions the president is making and that the government is making."
Gibbs hinted that the White House is likely to take to the internet to sell their message more in coming weeks, which also corresponds with the inexorable drive toward the start of the 2012 re-election campaign in the spring.
Obama is doing the right thing, it shows he cares.
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