Not to be outshone by either Organizing for America or the people who put together that "State of the Internet" video, the White House has repackaged its health-care-by-the-numbers week-long campaign into a catchy two minutes of statistics, cute graphics, and punchy music.

Credit: Robert Scoble (Title: "Jesse Lee blogging in Wordpress")

What, you don't subscribe to Delta Sky Magazine? You're missing out, then, on this interview with White House director of online programs Jesse Lee. As a Hill and DCCC vet, Lee has depth of experience in government and politics that is probably matched by only a few blog/new media folks. Here's how Lee describes his gig, and the role of the new media team in the White House:

My title is “online programs director,” but given that this is the first New Media department in the White House, we all have to kind of make up our roles on the fly. In practice, I’m the managing editor of whitehouse.gov and the main writer for the blog. I conceptualize and execute a lot of the online engagement from online town halls with the president to the more regular online video chats with senior policy folks. And I also serve as a sort of liaison to bloggers, which means I have one foot in the broader communications and press shops, and am also the main new media contact for other offices in the White House like the Office of Health Reform and the Office of Public Engagement. It’s a lot of hats, but it actually reflects well on how well integrated new media is here, which is a challenge most organizations haven’t conquered yet (we’re not just “the Internet people” as is often the case).

There was a concern when the White House new media team got its start that it would, in org-chart or in practice, be circumscribed by its place as part of the White House's communications wing. But, as Lee describes and as observation tells us, the new media shop seems to have relatively comfortably settled into a role of part outreach, part activism, part organizing, and part a dozen other things. That's probably aided by the fact that they used lingo like "Facetweet," as Lee says. That probably scares the rest of the White House staff into giving them some space.

It's a fun and enlightening interview, in general. And Lee touches on the pressing question of what a guy like him wears to work in the White House:

As a blogger, I’m actually required to wear pajamas to work, and my office was remodeled as a replica of my mom’s basement (which is sad, because it is unfinished and floods in the rain).

Hee. But take this as insight into what passes for wild and crazy behavior in DC:

Just kidding—suit and tie every day, though I have been known to wear brown shoes from time to time.

Brown shoes! Call down the Secret Service. He works in the joint.

Credit: GOOD Magazine

It's sometimes worth stopping and considering for a moment just how weird it is that the White House is, in 2010, a somewhat credible member of the greater blogosphere. Not weird in a judgemental way, but unusual in the way that, contrary to the normal course of history, the lines between 1600 Penn and the rest of the world seem to be blurred by the advent of the always-on digital conversation. On the communications front, at least, we're witnessing a White House that seems to have a certain permeability. They're aware of Internet traditions, and are not afraid to appropriate them where appropriate. This is, in other words and for whatever it's worth, a White House that retweets.

Prompting today's stop-and-consider is that the Obama White House has just made note on its blog that it's going to be participating in a rather bloggy exercise: asking the American people to respond to a question on either Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. They're calling it The White House Asks. "As an extension of the Administration’s commitment to making government more collaborative and participatory," blogs a member of the new media team, they will "highlight some of the most interesting responses on the White House blog."

The first question in The White House Asks series is this:

What does a 21st century education mean to you?

Where'd they get the good idea? Well, from GOOD, it seems. That California-based magazine has been doing pretty much the exact same experiment on their blog. For that, the White House gives "a hat tip to @GOOD for a good idea."

After this morning, I'm rooting for someone to suggest earmarking funds for airplane maintenance during today's bipartisan health care summit at Blair House between members of Congress of both parties and President Obama. I spent four hours sitting on a runway at JFK airport because some dashboard light either wouldn't go on or wouldn't go off. No take-off meant no in-flight wifi (and thus no blogging). Still, I was able to track the progress of the health care come-together fairly well just by getting online via my iPhone. That's because coverage of the summit's start came in a multitude of channels, from live blogging to live tweeting to online chats and more.

Whatever might come out of today's group therapy session in terms of legislative progress, it's probably fair to say that progress on another front is unavoidable: how those inside, outside, and around government learn to navigate the stream of information made possible by the real-time web. Here's a quick look at how people from all corners are -- in the context of today's bipartisan health reform summit in Washington -- experimenting with disseminating, annotating, and analyzing the stream of information we're able to access about what government looks like today...

In advance of Thursday's bipartisan meeting, the Obama administration has posted a copy of its vision of a health care reform package on WhiteHouse.gov. Check it out here. The White House has also added links on its site to the health care proposals being offered by House and Senate Democrats and Republicans -- though for at least one of those caucuses, the link simply points to its home page.

Thursday's health care fest at Blair House will be streamed live on the White House website.

"Watch out Kim Kardashian!" That's White House Press Secretary-turned-Twitter convert Robert Gibbs. Politico's Mike Calderone has a good story wrapping up White House denizens' forays into tweet land, with Gibbs (@PressSec) joining Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton (@billburton44) and New Media Director Macon Phillips (@macon44) in setting up "official" Twitter accounts.

There's a masters thesis for some communications student laying in wait on how the Obama White House has been navigating their relationship to the press. Much of it is new and never done before by a American presidency. For one thing, probably not enough attention has been paid to how this White House has turned the White House Blog into a weapon for pushing back against narratives ("Clearing Up the Bonuses Issue"), tweaking critics ("Newt Gingrich Gets it Wrong"), while also shining some sunlight on the officials, policies, and work that they'd like attention to be paid to ("Making Moves for a Healthier Generation"). The world of journalism has, generally speaking, embraced the idea that sometimes a blog post works where an article doesn't. It was probably only a matter of time until the White House figured out that press releases and press conferences aren't the only arrows in the quiver anymore.

It's worth noting that this White House seems gripped up the desire to avoid the White House press corps if they can just figure out how. Perhaps Twitter is the solution? Their embrace of new media seems marked more by a desire to break up with the established press and start going steady with the public rather than an interest in a more open relationship. Listen to how Phillips describes Gibbs' new use of Twitter in Calderone's piece: "He's able to communicate with the public now and CC the press corps." Sure they appreciate getting a copy!

The AP has a nice piece on the White House's on-going attempt to reinvent their communications strategy.

Credit: Gregory Skibinski

Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer is blogging out the White House's anger over the news that Republican Sen. Richard Shelby has signaled a hold on 70 or so of President Obama's nominees as he seeks to get favorable treatment on some projects in his home of Alabama. In case you're not sure about how Pfeiffer feels about Shelby's behavior, how post on WhiteHouse.gov is titled, "Another Day, Another Disappointing Political Ploy Obstructing Progress."

That the Obama White House is wielding its official blog to directly and pointedly challenge (in)action in the Senate is interesting enough. But the Shelby hold episode might suggest a "what if?" question of interest to us digital politics geeks here. Namely, what other Internet assets might a White House and its allies have in a political situation like this? Or to put it another way, is anything different about the calculus of an entrenched practice like a Senate hold in the age of Twitter and Facebook and Google Groups and the rest?...

Credit: WhiteHouse.gov

Way back when, when we first started discussing what a smart, savvy, modern, wired, and engaged Obama White House would look like, someone in these parts (okay, was me) suggested that one of the things that the Internet might be great at is directly connecting the American people with not only the President, but the subject-matter experts and point people buried within the administration who really do hold answers to questions on how the government does its thing day-in-and-out. The web could, the thinking goes, flatten that administrative hierarchy in a way that might be useful, ultimately making government more accessible and inclusive.

Say you want to know what's really going on behind this morning's news that we've scrapped a long-controversial national animal ID tracking program. Your best bet isn't going to be Obama or Robert Gibbs. If you're the sort of person who cares about food safety agricultural monitoring (a slice of people that ranges to farmers to students to researchers to activists), then you're going to want to hear details from someone at, say, USDA. If you can find someone who actually knows about program and can explain the competing interests that went into the reversal. We might come away actually knowing something more about how farm policy works in the U.S. It might be wonderful.

Anyway, that's a long lead-in just to point you to the news that, as the Hill's Kim Hart reports, the White House has announced a second bite at the 14,000 YouTube questions that came in after Obama's State of the Union address. This time, the official answerees are policy staffers from the Domestic Policy Council, the National Economic Council, and the National Security Council. It starts in just about ten minutes, at 12:45pm EST, and you can watch it here.

Update: The staffers doing the answering will, it turns out, be the Domestic Policy Council's Heather Higginbottom, the National Economic Council's Brian Deese, and the National Security Council's Ben Rhodes.

Years back, when I bought a house, someone gave me a piece of advice. Though I don't remember exactly who it was, I remember the guidance well. Don't pick a paint color by committee. You'll end up with a shade that doesn't particularly appeal to anyone.

I'm reminded of that today having just finished watching the White House's Open for Questions session where questions came in for the President through YouTube and Google Moderator. It's not a perfect fit. Some of the questions were very appealing to the people who submitted them. But while the project was intriguing, innovative, and exciting in concept, in execution it turned out that very few of the questions-via-YouTube got at topics that Obama hasn't addressed, repeatedly, in some other venue. The biggest winners today, perhaps, were the advocacy groups who got their questions into the dozen or so ones asked by YouTube news and politics editor Steve Grove to Obama.

There was a brief flurry of excitement when one of the early questions appeared to ask a question about hemp. But it turned out, in the end, that he was talking about HAMP -- HUD's Home Affordable Modification Program...

Grab yer popcorn. Obama's Open for Questions session, drawn from questions posted to YouTube, is about to begin (1:45pm EST). Watch here or here.