Obama's Transparent Presidency: Weekly YouTube Addresses

President-elect Obama's office gave the media a new way to present him as Franklin Roosevelt 2.0 by announcing Friday that it will be posting weekly addresses - fireside chats for the web generation - on YouTube.

The first address will appear on Change.gov this Saturday, after it airs in audio. An Obama spokesperson says that this innovation is just the beginning of the digital, transparent presidency. The plan appears to be in the mold of what the campaign did with videos like "Four Days in Denver" and Campaign Manager David Plouffe's conversations on the state of the race. These videos allowed supporters to feel like they had a direct connection to the campaign, a connection that bypassed the media. Already, the Obama team has made good on the post-election plan. It posted a video from Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama's transition chairs, discussing plans for the new administration. Watch it here:

Can the Obama team use the tools they built during the campaign to drum up support for complicated government initiatives? With a campaign, there were clear goals: raise money, organize, get out the vote. With a presidency, you have over 305 million Americans to motivate. We will be watching, texting, commenting, twittering, and of course, blogging the results.

Comments

[Knightskye]

"Adding comments has been disabled for this video."

Yeah, that's real interactive.

[boatsfra]

Sarah is getting her own webcam now...a nightly address is on its way...towe­ls optional..­.imagine if this happened 25 years ago? We wouldn't get to laugh at all of her youtube videos over and over again!! Go prez elect Barack...4­4th president of the US...unrea­l...this place is going to actually be tolerable for a change...o­h wait...Flo­rida and California are still attached to North America...­I suppose we can't have it all...

[Nancy84]

This is what I was waiting to hear. And to all of you who think it's just a forum for propaganda, you won't know until you see how things work out. If he walks the talk then what's the problem?

Bush's "Compassionate conservative" talk was propaganda.

Give President elect Obama a chance....­... or don't you want to see this country get better?

[Georgiamitch]

Does anyone out there have resources that could directly hook me up with Obama's media staff in order to get him to CLOSE CAPTION his weekly and any other YouTube clips for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. There are only a few segments on his website that are captioned but going into the new direction of reaching people via YouTube...­please if anyone knows how I can contact them directly and discuss this with them...I'd really appreciate it.

Thank you.

[TiredoftheMSM]

Send it to change.gov. There is a section there for your suggestions.

[tcuoohjohn]

Hmm....The Fireside Chat in cyberspace­..

[tcuoohjohn]

I can't quite decide if this is 21st Century FDR or a variant of a Hugo Chavez media blitz.

[plages]

Dear soon to be President Obama,

How terribly exciting, but please, "No" spinning, and what ever you do, treat US as adults, and not some type of non-thinking numb and dumb things!

[americanalien]

This new Presidency just gets cooler and cooler by the day.

[twestheimer]

I hope he does TV too because I suspect this will alienate the middle staters who still are not on the Internet or have slow connections.
Even better get everyone a fast connection using power lines!

[DASM]

Wonderful! Thank you, Mr. Obama, for including all of us - the "middle class" - in your speeches & thoughts. We're not the -- what did Palin call us?- Geeks in pajamas in our parents'; basement ?? - or something similar. We're listening/reading!

[BethinIllinois]

Guess what? The radio addresses weren't hard to find. Of course, maybe you had to take an interest..­.

[ckfan]

You don't get it, do you? The Internet allows more Americans access to information when they want to receive it based on their schedule. Radio is OLD SCHOOL.

[kotexbarbie]

Here's a trip down memory lane (from Wikipedia) --

"The Clinton administration launched the first official White House website on October 21, 1994. It was followed by three more versions, resulting in the final edition launched in 2000. The White House website was part of a wider movement of the Clinton administration toward web-based communication. According to Robert Longley, "Clinton and Gore were responsible for pressing almost all federal agencies, the U.S. court system and the U.S. military onto the Internet, thus opening up America's government to more of America's citizens than ever before." On July 17, 1996, President Clinton issued Executive Order 13011 – Federal Information Technology, ordering the heads of all federal agencies to fully utilize information technology to make the information of the agency easily accessible to the public."

What's old is new again. Actually, the aim of Clintons' web initiative was transparency. Obama's (so far) seems like persuasion.

[ckfan]

Then, why didn't your precious Clintons use the Internet to raise money, gather donors and e-mail information?

[kotexbarbie]

Because Bill Clinton attempted to open up the government to the Internet to make it more accessible to the people. That's the direction of transparency. It's what good governments do. (And by the way, he did this back in 1994 -- did anyone even have email then? This was certainly a ground-breaking use of technology that anticipated the modern social internet era by at least ten years. Howard Dean brought it to the next level of innovation back in 2004.)

Raising money, gathering donors and emailing information is not about governance, it's about campaigning. I'm not sure you want to equate the two in the way you did.

[SwingVoteNYC]

Main Thing .... for 8 years we have had Bushie destroy America.. I can Hope that we Give Obama respect and space when he needs it. The right wing will question every time Obama Farts....W­e can not allow a republican Party who has always had an Agenda that did not allow for real progress.

Regan might have helped create the EIC tax credit but had a huge hand in the Fake "War on Drugs" which some how pushed so much funds into locking up pawns, drug users which pushed privatization of correctional facilities. We now have a "War on Terror" that seems to employ the same misuse of power and capitol.

Education and Opportunity is always looked as "Welfare" and creating warehouses full of non-violent criminals for free labor to clean the streets and pick up liter is considered crime prevention. We have to do better.

[kotexbarbie]

Obama farts? I thought he was a post-flatulent president.

[Grabit]

I don't think he farts so much. He doesn't eat moose stew.

[Adrienne Williams - Huffpost Blogger]

Yep, so knew this was going to happen, and I bet we get to cam with him too! This is going to be a very interesting and watchful four years!

[DosaHut]

Cool. Imagine if McCain won. He's be giving his weekly address by carrier pigeon.

[tcuoohjohn]

You are cruel....f­unny...but cruel.

[ckfan]

Great idea. Good job President-Elect Obama.