Credit: The White House

The theme of last night's event at the New York Society for Ethical Culture's elegant building just west of Manhattan's Central Park was, officially, the somewhat objective question, "Obama: Change We Can Still Believe In?" But the vibe of the evening turned out to be more about relationships than distanced assessments. Whether by providence or a bit of good stage setting, the song that was playing when panelists Katrina vanden Heuvel and Ari Melber of the Nation, the New York Times Gretchen Morgenson, Politico's Ben Smith, and Demos' Ben Barber took to the stage actually seemed more on point. "You've got a friend..." sang James Taylor. On this night, to consider the future of the Obama years, the question was, well, does he?

He does, was the consensus of the evening. And Barack Obama has the poll numbers to prove it. But the sentiment on stage and in the crowd was still that Obama hasn't been much of a pal to the progressive movement in his first 13 months in office. Of course, we've talked here about this question of whether and why all the considerable momentum of the Obama campaign, ginned up and harnessed by the Internet in large part, was allowed to float off into the ether after Election Day. There was a rehashing of that last night, for sure. (13 million names! And for what!)

But Demos' Barber offered a newish take on the question of just where the grassroots aspect of the Obama enterprise went off course. "Narrative is a way of explaining to ourselves the nature of the world that we live in," he suggested, and argued that Obama has failed to provide one that would give his progressive allies a story book to go by. And the web, in particular, loves a good story...

Credit: BarackObama.com

At a fundraiser for low-dollar donors to the Democratic National Committee held in a DC hotel last night, President Obama fielded just four questions sent in by supporters through cell phone text messages or email, delivering policy-thick answers on his perspective of what needs to be done to pass health care reform (the gist: more vetting needs to be done), how government can help to grow small business (more lending), how we can keep America competitive in the future (more clean energy), and how the costs of higher education can be made more manageable (more loans and grants), in an event that had been billed by Organizing for America, in what was perhaps a bit of overpromise, as a "Conversation with the President." OFA Executive Director Mitch Stewart posed the questions to Obama at the tail end of an event that started about 20 past its scheduled 5:45pm EST start time, just after Obama wrapped up a speech to the crowd.

Leaving substance aside, performance-wise, aside from the event's Q&A-by-SMS twist what was perhaps most notable about the evening was just how fired up Obama seemed while delivering that speech. This Obama resembled more the candidate from the '08 campaign trail's most energetic days than the somewhat more staid president we've regularly seen over this past year. At one point, Obama just about yelled when admonishing the assembled crowd and those watching online to keep find, trumpeting, "Don't give up!" (Yes we can!, yelled someone in the crowd.) A passionate Obama continued. "The forces of the status quo might not give an inch," he said, "but we won't give an inch." Video of the full event is here.

Today's YouTube event at the White House, starring President Obama, CitizenTube director Steve Grove, and a bunch of user-generated questions from the public, has to be judged a success, in my view.

Just in case you had something better to do at 9 ET last night, here's what Obama had to say whittled down to just the segments of his hour-plus address that speak to what we cover here at techPresident. Think of it like Jefferson Bible, but with only the 2.0-ish bits. Let's begin. First off, Obama called on both houses of Congress to post all targeted funding requests online, collected in one place instead of scattered across members' own websites:

I’m also calling on Congress to continue down the path of earmark reform. You have trimmed some of this spending and embraced some meaningful change. But restoring the public trust demands more. For example, some members of Congress post some earmark requests online. Tonight, I’m calling on Congress to publish all earmark requests on a single website before there’s a vote so that the American people can see how their money is being spent.

Then he bragged on how his White House is posting visitor logs on the web:

To do that, we have to recognize that we face more than a deficit of dollars right now. We face a deficit of trust -- deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years. To close that credibility gap we must take action on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to end the outsized influence of lobbyists; to do our work openly; and to give our people the government they deserve. That’s what I came to Washington to do. That’s why -- for the first time in history -- my Administration posts our White House visitors online. And that’s why we’ve excluded lobbyists from policy-making jobs or seats on federal boards and commissions.

From there, the references get somewhat more oblique. There was talk of making it easier for Americans to get insight into how their credit cards, bank accounts, and other financial involvements work, something that prooposals have focused in on doing online:

We need to make sure consumers and middle-class families have the information they need to make financial decisions. We can’t allow financial institutions, including those that take your deposits, to take risks that threaten the whole economy.

And nope, Obama didn't mention the YouTube follow-up program the White House kicked off last night, but was this a reference to a widely circulated video from Haiti?

And what keeps me going -- what keeps me fighting -- is that despite all these setbacks, that spirit of determination and optimism -- that fundamental decency that has always been at the core of the American people -- lives on.

It lives on in the 8-year old boy in Louisiana, who just sent me his allowance and asked if I would give it to the people of Haiti. And it lives on in all the Americans who’ve dropped everything to go some place they’ve never been and pull people they’ve never known from rubble, prompting chants of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A!” when another life was saved.

Right at the very end of his speech, Obama switched from monologue to dialogue mode, pointedly looking straight into the camera for, really, the first time all night, and addressing the American people. (Here's maybe where he might have dropped in a YouTube reference.):

The spirit that has sustained this nation for more than two centuries lives on in you, its people. (Emphasis mine.)

That's that. Not a tremendous amount in the speech that spoke directly to technology, the Internent, or even the national broadband plan that's set to hit his desk soon. Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell went the more direct root in his Republican response:

[O]ur solutions aren't thousand-page bills that no one has fully read, after being crafted behind closed doors with special interests. In fact, many of our proposals are available online at solutions.gop.gov, and we welcome your ideas on Facebook and Twitter.

I was struck by something as I listened to President Obama speaking in Elyria, Ohio, last Friday, at one of the occasional townhalls he has held out in Ohio whenever he deems it important to get out of Washington and be seen "connecting" with the public.

A very quick comment on the meaning of yesterday's special election in Massachusetts, in terms of the role of technology in changing politics:

First, I couldn't agree more with what Nancy wrote here yesterday:

It seems appropriate to briefly interrupt today's radio silence to take note of the historic fact that President Barack Obama has tweeted for the very first time. Repeat, President Barack Obama has tweeted for the very first time. Those of you reading along in the privacy of your own homes, please make spirited "wooo, wooo, wooo" noises at this point.

Now, some of you are thinking, first time? What tha? What about the hundred-plus tweets on the @barackobama account? Seriously though, it should surprise just about no one that all of those postings under Obama banner during the campaign, transistion, and early presidency weren't actually typed out by Barack Obama. This is what staffers were created for. There is, in fact, a good chance that when you get an email from any politician asking for your support or thanking you for your contribution, he or she didn't write that either. Please break it to the children gently.

Of course, much was made during the campaign over the fact that John McCain described himself as a computer illiterate. But anyone running a presidential campaign -- or country -- is as much a CEO as anything else. And the expectation that a campaign principles are behind each and every online interaction can begin to seem like a unfulfilling target for a hunger for political authenticity. Whether or not a Obama or McCain "tweeted" or texted or blogged himself always seemed to be more an easy way to encapsulate a way of thinking about a candidate's approach the relationship between people and politics than being actually significant in and of itself.

But enough chatter. The big news today is that, while on a visit to the Red Cross mission control center for Haiti, President Obama pushed "enter" on a tweet. If anything meaningful can actually be made of the episode, it is perhaps that it shows how utterly central Twitter, text messaging and other social media has been to the Red Cross's relief efforts when it comes to Haiti. The Red Cross is reporting, for example, that their text messaging program (text HAITI to 90999 to add a $10 donation to the Red Cross to your mobile phone bill) has already raised a remarkable $13 $22 million.

But Obama's first unstaffed Twitter post isn't exactly a demonstration of the President's mastery of the nuanced art that is good tweeting. If the Red Cross's Twitter stream is to be believed, what Obama posted was a tweet written by someone else noting that "President Obama and the First Lady are here visiting our disaster operation center right now." So where we once had other people tweeting for Obama, now we have Obama tweeting for other people. We're getting closer...

Cross-posted at Huffington Post

Micah Sifry has written a widely discussed essay about the denuded Obama grassroots movement, touching on a broad range of issues, from the campaign team's exertion of top-down control to their missteps post-election to the myth-making and marketing of hope and change. There have been a couple of extended critiques and Sifry has written a series of follow-ups to address questions raised by his thesis.

I'd like to focus on one important aspect of the original essay, namely the motivating factor(s) behind Obama's grassroots support.

My friend Ralph Benko, author of The Webster's Dictionary: How to Use the Web to Transform the World, emailed me a very interesting response to my back and forth with Mark Tapscott. With his permission I'm sharing it here. It's Ralph's interpretation of how Saul Alinsky, the veteran community organizer, might analyze Obama today. The page references are all from Alinsky's book Rules for Radicals, (Vintage Books, a Division of Random House, Inc./New York, October 1989 printing). Ralph writes...

As 2009 comes to a close, and with it, the first year of the Obama administration, one big question seems to be hanging over the man who said he had "The Audacity to Hope," and promised his supporters "Change We Can Believe In." That question can be summed up with two simple pictures.

How did this...

produce this?