The White House press corps doesn't think like us.

At President Obama's first prime-time press conference, the 13 reporters selected to quiz the President did not ask a single one of the 15 best questions suggested by our readers -- on subjects ranging from struggling home owners to administration tax cheats, from shipping jobs overseas to building walls along the Mexican border.

The President talked -- and talked -- about the subjects he wanted to talk about: the depth of the nation's economic morass, his hopes for bipartisanship, his willingness to try something (anything!) to fix the economy. He effectively filibustered the press conference by giving long-winded answers, answering just 13 questions in 50 minutes. That's almost four minutes an answer. (In comparison, Sen. John McCain averaged 90 seconds an answer in an interview with the Chronicle last year.)

What was missing from the press conference? A connection with the problems of real people.

Yes, there were fewer-than-usual "inside baseball" questions from the White House press corps about the inside the beltway political process. But most of the 10 domestic policy questions skipped over the plight of working stiffs (and out-of-work stiffs) and instead focused on macroeconomic issues such as consumer spending, the depths of the economic crisis, oversight of the bank bailout, steps to stem the credit crunch.

Our readers' excellent questions on things like renegotiating high-interest rate student loans or sending "bailout checks" directly to Americans and not to big banks were not on the minds of the reporters from the TV networks, national newspapers and others chosen by the President. Nobody shared our readers' concerns about helping mortgage-holders pay down their housing debt.

What's more, all of the questions were national or international in scope. That meant zero questions about energy, zero questions about space exploration, zero questions about immigration, zero questions about border controversies from the border fence to drug cartel violence. There weren't even any questions about the U.S. manufacturing meltdown, Detroit's woes or state budget struggles from California to Florida.

All in all, President Obama made the points he wanted to make -- and none of the questions posed by the press corps were dumb or "gotcha" gimmicks. But the President and the nation would benefit from shorter answers, more diverse questions and maybe -- just maybe -- listening to the questions of folks like BillyBobTexas, PaulAmosP, MrBig and Doctor Johnson.

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For a list of the best questions submitted by our readers and whether the subject was addressed by the President at his news conference, click here.