« Given “Expert” Financial Advice, Our Brains Shut Down
Clinton: U.S. Partly To Blame For Mexico’s Drug War Problem Which Poses Potential U.S.Threat »
Obama’s Online Town Hall Q&A Begins This Morning
Mar 26th, 2009 | 2 responses
This morning President Barack Obama gets to do what many Presidents have dreamed of doing: having a Q&A that (if it’s done correctly) excludes working, salaried journalists (a definition which in its usual sense excludes typical bloggers) and entails taking questions from more than people in a specific area — a Q&A that will literally be conducted by the White House with people online located all over the world.
The verdict will likely depend on whether the White House chooses a bunch of softball, puff pieces so it turns out to have been akin to one of George Bush’s campaign rallies where only the faithful could get in. Will he get some hardball questions or not? Obama has talked about transparency and dialogue: will this be real or one more example of a politician saying something that sounds nice but turns out to be a bunch of this?
You can participate by going to Open For Questions at this link and setting up an account. The official website says this:
We invite you to participate in our community-moderated online town hall. Submit your own question about the economy and vote on submissions from others. We also encourage you to include a link to a video of yourself asking your question (ideally 30 seconds or less), but text submissions are all you need. Come back on Thursday to watch the President answer some of the most popular submissions live at WhiteHouse.gov.
UPDATE: The online town hall will be at 11:30 AM Eastern, the voting will close at 9:30 AM.
92,918 people have submitted 104,112 questions and cast 3,607,373 votes.
Will you add yours?
2 Responses to “Obama’s Online Town Hall Q&A Begins This Morning”
I added a question, and voted on several. I love the idea! I think it was largely a success although I didn’t watch the entire piece. I thought it was bold of him to answer the question about marijuana, I also like the townhall format in general.
No offense, but journalists seem to be more out of touch than congress itself, I think Obama gets this and it is nice to have direct access to the President. The press seems to think very highly of itself as of late, complaining, of all things, about Obama skipping the Gridiron dinner (I never heard of it) and going on Leno (love him).
In his televised town hall meeting, [Thursday, March 26, 2009] President Obama continues to miss the point about “failing schools.” The schools are not failing, the economy is failing the parents.
I've taught as either a volunteer or paid staffer at every level from the Head Start program in Richmond up through being a T.A. at SFSU. The best predictor of student performance is the resources – skills and attitudes – with which students arrive at school.
Students who arrive from neighborhoods where a high percentage of the adults – and particularly the men – are either missing or unemployed and recently released from prison, they arrive at school convinced that the American system is stacked against them.
The cure – and the only thing which will work long term – is replacing incarceration with employment.