Obama Puts Campaign Playbook to Use Promoting Agenda on Twitter, YouTube 1-27-2011
President Barack Obama is turning to his 2008 playbook by leaning on social media to help push his agenda through a politically divided Congress and gear up for next year’s re-election campaign. Obama and his aides are following up the president’s State of the Union address by mixing traditional set-piece events -- remarks at a Wisconsin factory yesterday -- with a flurry of public outreach via Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Google Inc.’s YouTube. “It will be a model of things to come,” said Dan Pfeiffer, White House communications director. “What you saw with the State of the Union is a warm-up act.” As a candidate in 2008, Obama and his team pioneered the extensive use of e-mail and social media to raise money and organize supporters. The playing field has been leveled since then. Lawmakers from both parties take to Twitter and YouTube to connect with voters. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, a potential Obama opponent in 2012, regularly communicates through Facebook. The latest administration dive into digital media coincides with a shuffling of Obama’s top advisers. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs is leaving next month and will eventually join the president’s re-election campaign, as is David Axelrod, Obama’s chief political adviser. Joining the White House is David Plouffe, Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, who on Jan. 10 became a senior adviser to the president. Around the Filters “Plouffe mastered talking to the American people around, over and through the national media filter,” said Michael Meehan, who worked on Senator John Kerry’s presidential 2004 campaign. The administration took to the Internet ahead of Obama’s Jan. 25 State of the Union address, with an online video for supporters laying out his themes. On the day of the speech, the administration supplemented live coverage by major broadcast and cable news networks with a live stream on the White House website. That was followed by an interactive online discussion with administration officials, just as reporters and analysts were doing the same on television programs. Yesterday Pfeiffer took questions on Twitter. Today administration officials answer questions about the economy, education and foreign policy on the administration’s Facebook page.
