WRITTEN ON January 20th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Political engagement
It’s Obama party day. Hurrah! Pray nothing bad happens.
Interesting piece on the geeks behind Obama’s web strategy: the people, the history, and the question of where it goes now (Boston Globe)
It’s far from clear whether all of this amounts to substantive change, or merely represents a patina of changelike communications. Obama’s campaign promised to use the Internet to furnish easily searchable files on everything from government spending to data on regulated industries, and to Webcast more public meetings. When I spoke before the election to Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford law professor and Internet adviser to the campaign, he pointed out that Obama needs to fight hard for real change — like fixing healthcare, radically reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to fight climate change, and ensuring Internet freedoms — to sustain his network’s enthusiasm. “The thing they don’t quite recognize is how much of their enormous support comes from the perception that this is someone different,” Lessig said. “If they behave like everyone else, how much will that stanch the passion of his support?”
Yes, it must be so good to have a complete “regime change” when everyone can admit that mistakes were made and promise to do better.
I was very impressed by some excerpts from BO’s speech: They seemed to hit exactly the right note.
Then some “expert” spoilt the effect by revealing that GW had said exactly the same things!
But what a contrast, as the grey UK grinds wearily into a deeper and deeper hole.
I do hope that some of OB’s optimism & enthusiasm spreads over here.