Watching Barack Obama at the world?s first Twitter town hall was like watching a slugger in a batting cage. If anything came even near the plate, he smacked it for a hit.
Not even a high, inside fastball directed at his head by Republican House Speaker John Boehner brushed him back much. ?After embarking on a record spending binge that?s left us deeper in debt, where are the jobs?? Boehner tweeted.
Continue ReadingThat?s the corrected version, anyway. The real version had some typos or electronic hiccups like a lot of tweets do. Tweeting is a little like appearing on live television: You can take a long time to think about what you want to say, but it?s real tempting not to.
In any case, Obama fouled off the first pitch ? ?First of all, John obviously needs to work on his typing skills? ? but then made solid contact. ?This is a slightly skewed question,? the president said. The ?Republicans are resistant? to making necessary changes, and he has not ?gotten the cooperation I?d like to see.?
And then the kee-rack of the bat: ?Eventually, I?m sure the Speaker will see the light.?
The Speaker was not there to respond. Nobody who asked a question was. Which is why the president never struck out. Twittering ? typing questions of 140 characters or fewer on the Internet ? has become a national mania, with some 110 million tweets being sent by tweeple into the twitterverse each day.
I have been tweeting for less than eight weeks under the name @politicoroger and am totally hooked. It is a medium made for the wiseacre kid who was always made to stand in the hall because he talked too much in class.
But the tweets that got through to the White House Wednesday were carefully ?moderated? by, in the words of the official White House release, a ?team of seasoned Twitter users.? Not that they were White House shills. Drew Cline, tweeting under @DrewHampshire, was a moderator, and he is the conservative editorial page editor of the New Hampshire Union Leader.
The idea of the Twitter town hall, similar to presidential debates in which questions are submitted by email, is based on the ?wisdom of crowds? notion that if enough ordinary citizens ask questions, they will be superior to or, at least equal to, the questions asked by ?experts,? in this case the White House press corps.
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