CHICAGO (FOX 32 News) -
A FOX News Poll released Wednesday found President Obama and likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney in a dead heat, with 46 percent each.
It comes as the president is trying to rekindle enthusiasm among younger voters.
On the campus of the University of North Carolina Tuesday night, the president recorded a TV appearance that some critics complain was undignified for the Commander in Chief. Mr. Obama was on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon."
In one of the show's signature bits, "Slow-Jammin' the News," he again urged Republicans in Congress to vote to keep interest rates on student loans from doubling on July 1.
Undignified? You judge.
"That means some hard-working students will be paying about a thousand dollars extra just to get their education," Obama said in the segment. "So, I've called on Congress to prevent this from happening. What we've said is simple. Now is not the time to make school more expensive for our young people."
"Oh, yeah. You should listen to the President. Or, as I like to call him, the Pree-zy of the United Stee-zy," Jimmy Fallon said in response.
No one called him the Pree-zy at a more sedate campus roundtable on the same topic, where he talked about initially struggling to repay his own student loans.
"The first job I got out of college paid $10,000 a year," Obama said.
But Republican and other critics were still focused on the Jimmy Fallon appearance, complaining that, in addition to being not very funny, it wasn't presidential.
Obama backers, though, pointed to likely GOP nominee Mitt Romney's appearance four months ago on late night comedian David Letterman's show.
In Letterman's "Top 10" segment, they featured the Top 10 Things Mitt Now Would Like to Get Off His Chest.
Romney's No. 10 jokingly asked whether it was time for a president who looks like a 1970s game show host. Letterman enthusiastically agreed.
Romney is reportedly considering an invitation to appear on "Saturday Night Live," as he focuses now on the fall general election.
Sources said Romney would be endorsed next Tuesday by former Republican front-runner Newt Gingrich.
"We're going to be here through the week," Gingrich said. "But we are going to think carefully about how we can be the most helpful to the country."
Romney' wife Ann was recently on Entertainment Tonight talking about her battle with multiple sclerosis. On "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon," the president called Mrs. Romney "lovely."
