Barack Obama is on a college kick this week, urging "disengaged" students to turn out for midterm elections. (Most college students don't know what these are.) Can he energize these jaded hippies, who loved him so much in 2008?

The president will hold a rally at the University of Wisconsin later in the week, but today, he kicked things off with a conference call to "student journalists." Ha ha, sucks to be him. Then again, he was probably able to talk over these non-offending eager beavers and stay on his message, which was pretty simple: Come on, college.

"Naturally some of the excitement and enthusiasm began to drain away," Obama said. While his administration has succeeded in pushing through significant changes in areas such as health care and student loan funding, it seems to many people "like a lot of the old politics is still operation."

But the political process usually involves taking "two steps forward [and] one step back," he said. "It's not always fun and games." You can't expect lasting change if you only engage "once every 10 years in an exciting presidential election" and then "sit it out."

Hey man, once in 10 years is better than zero in ten years, man. Find college kids more urbane literary self-aware minority professors with once-in-a-generation speaking abilities and Kenyan names to run in those congressional and gubernatorial races, and maybe they'll show up again.

[Image via AP]