Krugman on Obama and 'You 2.0'

Overworked, Public, Economist -- These are the three words Paul Krugman used to described himself as we sat back in Princeton, NJ for our interview. Add to that the titles 'New York Times columnist,' 'Princeton Professor of Economics' and '2008 Nobel Prize laureate in Economics' and you begin to get a sense of the man behind all of the big headlines.

In Part 2 of my conversation with Krugman, we discuss everything from the impact of the Yes We Can generation, to political nominations within the Obama administration.

An interview with Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman (Part 2)

Where do you see the biggest impact of 'You 2.0' and the Obama administration's social media strategy in the next four years?

Krugman: Some of it has already happened.

There have been some proposed appointments in the national security area, or at least floated appointments, that have essentially been torpedoed because the online community said no, 'these guys are unacceptable!' and rightly so.

There will be other areas affected but remember that basic policy formulation won't come out of this stuff because it's detailed. It will always require somebody sitting at a desk with lines of access and so on... But fast critique now demands that issues be brought to the front of the table when they were not being considered in the past.

Yes, the online community is gaining in power and influence and the effects are compounded because we realize it. Yes, it will be harder for this (Obama) administration to slip!

In the later Clinton years, the administration took on more of a managerial role and wasn't as pro-corporate as a republican administration but less of a force for democratic change than one would have hoped. That's partly because they had a hostile congress but it's also that there was no effective community saying: 'Hey this is not what we elected you for!' I think the Obama administration will have that kind of community and a good thing, too!

Now that people all over the world have seen the impact that a single person can have using social networking technology -- do you think that's going to change the way that we view our own possibility to actually take control of our own destinies?

Krugman: I think there is something like that happening and it's not just what is happening in America. What I hear a lot, is that many countries (sic), including very oppressive regimes --

it starts as people having Facebook profiles just for friends, then something happens. It turns out that that same technology, that same involvement is also a way of getting political action together. People can be mobilized and I think it changes a lot of things.

In the 18th century, when we lived in small towns and everybody could participate and then we moved to this world where the power became very distant and news media far away, dictated how you saw the world. Now I don't want to romanticize it but I think that it's going to affect a lot of the world.

Take the famous Jacques Chirac quote: "The internet is an Anglo Saxon network,' that is no longer true at all. I watch my own links for my blog posts and I can see that we really are a small world. I'm seeing Chinese links, Korean links, Russian links. It's a world now where this involvement has spread to very many cultures and indeed it is a very small world.

Comments

[ohioan73]

I was born in the 70s and lived my life entirely in post-civil rights America, and as a black person living in this new racially tolerant world, I never saw black achievements as anything but glorious, yet I am so ready for the black pioneering to end. My generation X era thinking puts me in a strange position of numbness about this whole thing. I wish for a world that doesn't care what color or gender someone is. I was deluded into thinking that the MIA solved all my problems decades ago and now I can just live in my skin and be happy. I am disappointed that this is not yet true. All the fanfare surrounding Obama makes me enormously proud as a black person, but worried that the horrifyingly scary past is not the past. I live in the nightmare of inequality even in the 21st century. I would feel a lot more proud of America if he was treated like just another guy. I am torn about this because how far have we gotten if we can elect a black man and then make a huge deal about his race?

[politisophical]

i come from a family of staunch Latin small business republicans... i can honestly say that in this last election i commanded around 20 votes.. my up to date knowledge provide by huffpost, redstate, dailykos, TPM, and countless heavily cited blogs have made me a pool for political knowledge...

my family voted republican because they knew the platform, once i taught them that the republican party have turned their backs on us, they gladly vote to other candidates.. heck, i even got many of them to vote against prop 8 on the bases that it was unconstitutional....try that with hardcore fundamentalist catholics

that only my story, im guessing that many people here have similar stories... that is the power of the our online movement..

[KGinSanFrancisco]

You are so right. Information is power and the internet and the blogs gave us access to unprecedented amounts of information. I would spend hours online everyday during the campaign, getting informed and blogging. It was a fascinating time and so worth it. The press was not the only source of information available and could not have a big impact to distort the facts like in the past. Remember how they destroyed Howard Dean and John Kerry? Thanks to the internet the best man won!

[dollardream]

bravo, baby!

[MarieFara]

I think the online community IS gaining in power, but I also believe that they have power as long as an administration GIVES them (us) power. The Obama administration isn't perfect, they don't answer things the way we want them to all the time, but they give us a place to vent and be heard. I think about Dick Cheney and Bush doing something like this, or even CARING enough to do something like this and I just can't see it.

I remember the interview with Dick Cheney where they told him of a poll that showed the majority of Americans were opposed to the Iraq war or wanted withdrawal (I can't remember which one) and his response..... "so?" People like that would not have given us the channel to express ourselves that Obama has.

I know this is looking too far into the future, but I wonder what the next administration (Obama) will do. Will it continue to involve us and build on what Obama started or will it shut us out?

[Juliette Powell]

Thanks for your comment Marie. I just received an invite that might answer your question. i'll be writing up my next blogpost around it but thought you might be interested in a quick overview now:
To contribute ideas directly to the President, you can join the Citizen's Briefing Book- an online forum where you can share your ideas, and rate or offer comments on the ideas of others. The best-rated ones will rise to the top, and after the Inauguration, your idea could be included in the Citizen's Briefing Book to be delivered to President Obama. More on this in my next Huffington Post article in the next couple days or go to juliettepowell.com for more now.

[singforpeace]

This interview speaks to the exciting new era that is emerging. What got me so excited about the Obama candidacy was the movement that was building around it. As a child of the Civil Rights Movement, I haven't seen this kind of organization, sense of common purpose, and energy since then. And most exciting is how diverse the voices are in the movement. That presents interesting challenges, but also has the potential to really create a much stronger democracy. The fact that there is an online community means that it is truly possible to be engaged in the process even if your own life circumstances prohibit you from meetings, etc. The thing we have to consider is how to engage those who don't have the money or access to the technology. Perhaps that recovery plan and the expansion of the technical infrastructure can begin to include those silenced and marginalized voices.

[Juliette Powell]

I completely agree with you and thank you for commenting. It seems to me that the deep digital divide is only accentuated by a lack of media literacy, especially for those who have not grown up with access to technology. To begin to close these gaps, we'll need more than technology, we'll need engaged citizens willing to roll up their sleeves and get back to good old fashion mentorship and an 'each one teach one' attitude.

Meanwhile, thanks to social technology and the ability to use it, we can also begin to think in terms of an 'each one teach many' paradigm. Some great examples of that are on youtube or at http://www.ted.com/talkss.

[BadgersBite]

This is an intresting blog on Social Media

http://alanrobbins.blogspot.com/2008/12/while-i-was-on-vacation-you-can-read.html