You’ve got to love Barack Obama. Okay, I can hear some of you “drill baby drill” types objecting. But listen, we’ve gone from a president who could not pronounce the word nuclear to someone who produces slick fireside chats like this one, his latest:
See what I mean? He inspires confidence. And his forays into the web are turning President Obama into seemingly the most accessible president since Lincoln, who used to talk to virtually to everyone who showed up.
Obama’s weekly video addresses can be found at www.whitehouse.gov. You can download it as a podcast, too. I used to listen to Obama’s podcast when he was a state senator from Illinois. He published only a few, and ditched the podcast when his schedule evidently got to busy, but he has retained his familiar style: the particular way he has of making his listeners feel that is one of them, not an elite.
He’s got a blog, too, at whitehouse.gov/blog/. Sure, it’s nothing more than a less formal press release written by staffers, but it’s worth reading. And the photos are gorgeous. Those White House photographers know their stuff.
Then there was his online town hall meeting held on March 26.
I was one of the 90,000 people who submitted questions to the president. Here’s the way it worked: you logged onto whitehouse.gov and could submit questions in one of several predetermined categories, such as education, jobs, and healthcare. You could submit your own questions, and you could vote on other people’s questions. The president gamely vowed to answer the most popular questions based on the popular vote.
There seems to have been an organized campaign by pot smokers to ask the question why he doesn’t legalize marijuana. The president didn’t sidestep the issue, he commented on it right away, dismissing the idea of legalization. There were also dozens of silly questions about legalizing online gambling. And then there were those who simply used the event as a way to bloviate.
The idea of an online town meeting was smart. For the president, it provided a safe, scripted environment (he was in a room packed with people largely sympathetic to his administration) and the less safe, unscripted questions from people participating online.
But the best aspect of the meeting was just this participation. Visitors felt like they had a stake in the process: the could submit content, vote on others’ content, and maybe, just maybe, have the president read their question on the air. A brilliant strategy.
Soon all this online civic engagement will be old hat. Even our state senator, Tony Strickland, is dipping his toe in the water (awkwardly, unconvincingly, but nevertheless):
So where does this leave us? In a brave new world. Although posting videos, podcasts, and legislation online does provide some measure of transparency, the politician, be he Barack Obama or Tony Strickland, still controls the message.
But that’s why we have people like bloggers, or, even better, journalists. If only newspapers weren’t dying out.
