on Barack Obama and social media

A lot has already been written about President-elect Barack Obama's use of social media as one of the tools he used to win the election. As Adam Mastrow noted on the Mashable blog, Obama used social media such a Twitter and Facebook to announce rallies, solicit contributions and keep his supporters wired in. (Full disclosure: I am one of those supporters.)

Much has also been made of what our new president will do with that data base of over 3 million supporters now that he's in office. His people have registered the domain name change.gov. It is a very well done site. It gives the president-elect the ability to communicate directly with his supporters without the filter of the news media.

Oh, I know that is unlikely Barack Obama himself is spending much time creating content for the site. He has a pretty full plate, obviously. But, I am willing to bet that he knows exactly what is on change.gov and approves everything that goes on it. In other words, I am sure he reads it alot, or at least gets daily briefings on it.

And that's the point of this blog entry. I want to turn the conversation on its head. I think what social media is going to do is return access to our elected leaders to us, the people. 

A century ago, the president held an open house at the White House at least once of year where anyone could come and shake the president's hand. President Teddy Roosevelt is supposed to have held the record - shaking over 8,000 hands at one such event. Remember, this was after the assignations of Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield and William McKinley. 

But, as time went on, the president became more and more walled away from us. The stories of Richard Nixon  holing up in the White House during the Watergate scandal and the first George Bush not knowing what a grocery scanner was are both indicative that isolation.

Obviously, there are some legitimate reasons for building walls around the president. There are a lot of people out there who want to take a shot at the president. I suspect it is going to even worse for Barack Obama because a lot of racists just cannot stand the idea of a Black man being president. That's on top of Al Qaeda, North Korea and every other group in the world who currently hates the U.S.

That means that the president could become very isolated from the American people. How could he not? It is not as if he could head down to the local Starbucks for Vente Latte and to shoot the bull about Wall Street.

That is not the way the Founders wanted things. They saw the president as a leader, but also one of the people. They did not want him isolated. Thomas Jefferson often answered the White House door himself. Andrew Jackson threw a three day party when he was inaugurated. Anyone could wander into Lincoln's White House early in the Civil War and talk to the president.

It has been a long time since the president was able to walk among the rest of us. In the recent past, there was really was no way to talk directly to the president - unless you had the cash to attend $10,000 a plate fundraiser. Or you were a boyhood friend. Sure, you could write a letter, but do you really think any president in the late 20th century saw those letters?

Now, though, I think there is way for the kind of interaction the Founders envisioned. Yes, Barack Obama can now talk directly to the American people without any filters. But, now we can talk back. Sure, I don't think that Barack Obama is spending much time on Twitter or Facebook. But, if 10,000 people suddenly start Tweeting him about something, I think there will be a response.

Unlike a letter writing campaign, we are going to know if there are 10,000 tweets. Social media is much more transparent. 

So, while I doubt most of us will actually be shaking the new president's hand anytime soon, there will more communication than in a long time.