| | | Obama barely stays awake chatting to student
By David K. Li
July 11, 2014 | 12:46am
I think he's getting high a lot.
US President Barack Obama meets with Kinsey Button Photo: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images
Already under attack by critics who say he’s lost interest in his job, President Obama added fuel to the fire on Thursday with a drowsy appearance in Texas.
A heavy-lidded Obama struggled to keep his head up during a one-on-one talk in an Austin cafe with a college student whose parents lost their jobs last year.
Kinsey Button, a junior at the University of Texas at Austin, huddled with the president in a booth at the Magnolia Cafe, where he ordered hot tea and she sipped coffee while discussing her parents’ plight.
The meeting was a break for Obama, who since his arrival in Texas Wednesday has been hammered politically for not visiting the Mexican border, which has been flooded with thousands of children from Central America.
Button, 20, had written to Obama late last year describing her family’s troubles.
Her dad, an engineer, was laid off and struggling to land another job. Button said he was often rejected as overqualified.
Her mom, a preschool teacher, lost her position as well.
In the months since Button wrote the White House — and was invited to chat with Obama — her family’s fortunes have turned around.
Mom enrolled in a community college, and Dad found work in manufacturing.
Obama has recently come under fire for his apparent lack of engagement. Columnist Peggy Noonan wrote this week that he’s “given up” and is “running out the clock” on his second term.
Noonan, an author and speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, said Obama is convinced his legacy is already in place.
“He’s waiting for history to get its act together and see his true size,” she wrote.
“It is weird to have a president who has given up,” she wrote. “So many young journalists diligently covering this White House .?.?. think what they’re seeing is normal. It is not. It is unprecedented and deeply strange. And, because the world is watching and calculating, unbelievably dangerous.”
With Obama dozing in Austin, First Lady Michelle Obama was on her game in New York City.
She met with teen leaders at the educational nonprofit Global Kids before encouraging Latino activists at the League of United Latin American Citizens’ national convention in Midtown to attend college and pursue their dreams.
“Make no mistake about it, we have to keep on fighting as hard as we can on immigration, and as my husband has said, we’re going to do whatever administrative action it takes to fix this broken system,” she said at the New York Hilton.
She then headlined a Democratic National Committee fundraiser that was closed to the press before heading back to DC.
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