The Web on the Candidates

OpenSecrets.org has built an amazing Flash tool that graphically represents the links between the top five contributors to presidential campaigns and the candidates. The candidate and donor names are featured in bubbles, and when you click on, say, Mitt Romney's bubble, you'll see his top five donors (Goldman Sachs, Bain Capital, HIG Capital, Kirkland & Ellis, Marriott International). Click on the Goldman Sachs bubble and you'll see who they've contributed to (Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, and Barack Obama) and on and on... [via epolitics]

Unbeknownst to most followers of the candidates, John McCain is a huge Beach Boys fan. He recently displayed his love for the '60s group by singing his favorite song, "Bomb Iran," at a recent campaign stop. No, I'm kidding! He was actually asked by a supporter how he would deal with the threat of Iran, and he nervously laughed and said, "You know that old Beach Boys song 'Bomb Iran?'" and proceeded to sing "Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran..." Now, inevitably, the clip is on YouTube, and in the YouTube era it could be a pretty damning document. AirCongress has more, including an odd statement from Arizona Rep. John Shadegg, who came to McCain's defense.

History's Lessons for a Wired White House...Tracking the Evolution of Change.gov...Incoming Administration Faces Information Overload...Palin's Unstoppable Online Power...Just How Historic Was Obama's Presidential Run?...American Diplomacy in the Age of Facebook...and more.

Obama's HHS appointee Tom Daschle has taken to the transition website Change.gov to respond to comments about how to cure what ails the American health landscape. But, of course, "interactivity" isn't necessarily limited to the web...By dissecting a single blog post, the Sunlight Foundation's Greg Elin makes the case that, yes, even cautious, handcuffed government can make the web more interactive, more transparent, and even more fun!...[O]ne unnoticed but much welcomed change to Change.gov: blog posts are now signed by their authors -- even retroactively...and more.

Change.gov's Open for Questions feature opened for business just yesterday morning, as I reported. Already, its first scandal! A few dozen queries about the suddenly infamous deal-making governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, are being "censored," writes Politico's Ben Smith...The Obama campaign has been hitting its email list plenty hard over the last few days, hawking, on behalf of the Democratic National Committee, everything from $35 four-year calendars to a rather cute knit cap, yours for $25 or more...Former Clinton Administration Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers, who knows a thing or two about uncomfortable White House sexual situations, says on VanityFair.com that a recent Facebook photo of Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau fondling a cardboard version of a certain member of his boss's cabinet-to-be, "is no laughing matter"...and much more.

[With the federal government in transition, and high expectations for the Obama Administration to revolutionize how government uses the web and other technology to make its processes more open, interactive and effective, we thought it would be interesting to repost this white paper, which was recently posted online by the Federal Web Managers Council. The council is an interagency group of almost 30 senior web managers from the federal government, that includes web directors from every cabinet-level agency, several independent agencies, and representatives from the judicial and legislative branches. It serves as the steering committee for the Web Content Managers Forum, a group of nearly 1,500 government web managers across the country. These folks are on the front-line of how government uses the web--and as you'll see from what follows, they're chomping at the bit to move forward into the Networked Age. The Editors.]

Are you a local elected official looking for advice from your peers on how to make better use of web technologies to relate to your constituents? Or perhaps you're a government IT specialist looking for support in your battles with footdragging higher-ups? Maybe you're looking for perspective from within the system on how government entities are implementing web 2.0 strategies? Or perhaps you are a not-so-tech-obsessed public-minded public servant who is simply looking for mutual support, across the often silo-ed and stultified world of government work?

You can find all of those things and more at GovLoop.com, an eight-month old social network created by Steve Ressler, a twenty-something federal employee living in Tampa, Flordia. Built on the free Ning.com platform, GovLoop has about 4,000 members at present, and is growing, Ressler says, at the rate of about 1,000 a month, almost entirely by word of mouth. The site is getting about 500 to 1,000 unique visitors a day, and about 150 thousand page views a month. Its members come mainly from all over the U.S., working in local, state and federal government jobs, but also include a smattering of good-government public interest types, academics and what Ressler refers to as "government contractors with good intentions." Plus there's an international contingent from English-speaking countries like Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

I had a nice chat with Ressler late Friday afternoon, and he gave me a full rundown on how GovLoop came to be and where he hopes it will go...

She's been uncharacteristically quiet since her confirmation as Secretary of State, but the Obama Administration's other rock star seems poised to change all that with her first big overseas trip to Asia - with the help of a Twitter-fueled blog audience that has increased three-fold since Barack Obama's inauguration. And while she inherits massive foreign policy challenges from her predecessor, Hillary Clinton also inherits a new media team at State that's at least a year into remaking America's digital image on the web.

Started under former Secretary Rice - and emphatically seamless, professional and non-partisan in its transition to Secretary Clinton - the expansion of State's online operation seems primed for President Obama's primary international goal: rebuilding the U.S. brand overseas.

Last week, Secretary Clinton's team at the State Department put up a short post on Dipnote, the departmental blog, asking for suggestions on technology and social media. It asked: "How Might the U.S. Utilize Innovative Technologies To Discuss U.S. Foreign Policy?"

The responses are illuminating and thoughtful, and worth reading by anyone considering the evolution of open government in the digital age.

President Barack Obama managed to pack into a three-and-a-half-minute YouTube video clip both well-wishes to Iranians marking the celebration of Nowruz and the extension of a semi-open hand to Iran's leaders -- deriding "threats" but offering up hope for "engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect." (The White House makes plain on YouTube that the clip is in the public domain. What's Farsi for "Forward this, please!"?) The Guardian U.K.'s Julian Borger argues the video's mission is to undermine the claim of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and others that Obama is nothing more than George Bush redux. Bush, to be sure, delivered his own Persian New Year's message last year, but he did it via the Voice of America's Persian News Network -- and he used it to chronicle the failings of the Iranian leadership. But how many Iranians living in Iran actually saw Obama's message? That's somewhat unclear. The Associated Press notes that, unsurprisingly, the clip wasn't aired on Iran's state-run television. And, reports the AP, "popular video-sharing sites like YouTube are blocked in Iran." But Berkman Center's new crowd-reported Herdict site tells a different story. Out of 30 reports coming out of Iran, a full 22 contributors say that they're managing to get their YouTube fix.

In an exit interview with the new Public Diplomacy Magazine, former State Department point person on online/offline diplomacy James Glassman reports, "In my humble opinion Web 2.0 has completely changed this game." But with Bush-appointee Glassman taking leave of Foggy Bottom, there has been some questioning inside and outside State of how well his Facebook/YouTube/Twitter-powered "Public Diplomacy 2.0" had a place in Hillary Clinton's universe. The Associated Press's Matthew Lee, at least, sees signs that PD 2.0, as Glassman liked to call it, is a natural fit for the Clinton era. "In less than three months, Clinton's State Department has embarked on a digital diplomacy drive," he writes, "aimed at spreading the word about American foreign policy and restoring Washington's image."

In the handful of weeks of Clinton's tenure thus far, reports Lee, State started or juiced a number of new-media projects. Clinton's State Department launched an multimedia-enhanced Google map of her global jaunts. They've been experimenting with a "Text the Secretary" mobile feature that allows anyone to pose a question when she's on the road (though questions like "How was your trip?" aren't exactly provocative.) And they've kept the well-produced DipNote blog rolling along. Clinton also plans to expand upon X-Life, a mobile phone game that aims to bring the English language and American culture to the Middle East. ("Salah Moaveni has received the opportunity of a lifetime, an international exchange program to International University in Philadelphia Pennsylvania, USA... He will maneuver around the University, learning about the local culture, in order to take on trivia challenges, complete quests, and modify a project car to road-race against a bullying school tyrant called The Zephyr.")

And Clinton aide Cheryl Mills says things like "New media is critical in this new era of diplomacy, where smart power and expanded dialogues are essential to achieving our foreign policy goals." All of which is no doubt pleasing to the good folks at the Hillary Grassroots Campaign. Did Condoleezza Rice have a fan club like that?