by Tony Jones
Special to the Tri-State Defender

President Barack Obama will be live on YouTube via Google on Monday (Jan. 30) for a national town hall chat open to all citizens.

Called a Google Hangout, citizens who would like to participate have until Saturday to sign up for submission by going to the White House YouTube channel. A selected few will be chosen to speak with the president during the live broadcast. Others will be addressed by the president and administration during the chat, and citizens will be allowed to vote on the questions they would like to see addressed.

Complete instructions are available at the White House’s official webpage, WhiteHouse.gov/SOTU.

Hitting the grid immediately following Tuesday’s State of the Union address, more than 30 officials, including Vice President Joe Biden, are being made available for direct feedback of citizen concerns via a process termed Office Hours on Twitter.

The live chat follows an earlier direct outreach initiative available to the public, the “President’s Agenda and the African American Community,” which was released last fall and featured in the Dec. 1 edition of The New Tri-State Defender (“TSD probes for President’s African-American mission”).

“These events are very important to the White House,” Director of Digital Strategy Macon Phillips said. “We want to engage the public that is outside Washington. We want to understand what people have to say and get the president’s reaction to people’s ideas.”

Google will compile and choose the answers that will be forwarded to the president.

When challenged about whether Google’s role could create an ethical problem, Phillips answered, “Google is putting it together and we will not be seeing the questions ahead of time.  Some questions will come through live and another good process is that people will be able to vote on the questions that are being compiled,” he said.

“It’s fair and open to the public. We’ve engaged with social media before, and will be doing more in the future. Our goal is to reach more everyday Americans.”

But is this just a pre-election campaign ploy, a charge Obama’s critics and potential opponents will certainly hurl. Is it just smoke and mirrors?

Absolutely not, Phillips said, offering an example.

“We have a system now called ‘We The People’ that is a new process where anyone can access the White House website and create a petition. If they get enough people to sign it they will get an official, on the record response. Through this process we became aware of the awful business known as puppy mills, and through the online petition process we were able to craft legislation that is as new and current as possible to move legislation to the floor.”

Phillips gives the example of the recent unified protests concerning legislation dealing with Internet piracy. Computer companies and Internet users throughout the nation (and from around the world) successfully soaked Congress with e-correspondence criticizing the legislation as written and it was taken off the Congressional agenda to be rewritten.

“We were petitioned by two different petitions on this issue and the administration hadn’t weighed in on the debate in Congress, but when we were informed on the public’s feelings through the new online petition process we knew how to respond to the wishes of the American public,” said Phillips.

“This stuff is new and in the last three years we have learned how to improve the tech communication process and make it actually bring value to the process, and we’re very excited about what lies ahead.”

So, is President Obama becoming a geek?

Laughing, Phillips said, “I wouldn’t call him a full blown geek, but he’s very engaged with the process.”

But what if something goes offline, as is common in heavy computer usage?

“We’ve definitely had our share of high wire acts, but you have to live and learn as with anything else. We definitely make sure everything is well tested before we engage the president.”