Print ‘n’ Read Feature: e-Hail to the Chief

Jose Antonio Vargas of the Washington Post has been providing some of the best, most persistent coverage of the use of digital media by the presidential candidates all year.

And now he’s written a big where-we’ve-been/where-Obama-goes-from here piece. Like so much important writing about technologies, e-Hail to the Chief is a lousy read on the web. And so it is my first Print ‘n’ Read ™ feature of 2009, a distinction I assign to articles about technology so valuable they are actually worth printing out on paper and reading away from the computer.

The major theme is how hard it’s going to be for Obama to use the digital media that helped get him into office to carry out the duties of that office. [I've whacked this particular mole-head many times in this blog.]

Highlights include comments from Google’s Eric Schmidt and Al Gore about the messiness of digital democracy when people don’t like what the President is doing–and organize against the very guy they supported. [Am I the only one who didn't know Gore is a "senior adviser" to Google?]

But my favorite part comes at the end, where Vargas witnesses one of the “house meetings” that the transition team’s digital wing is organizing via the web to try to make use of the hunger for civic participation they’ve created.

It’s a somehow sad scene in which regular citizens create and capture a long list of well-worn goals–health care, energy, education, etc., etc., etc.–on a big poster at the front of the room.

The effect is a lingering sense of well-intentioned impotence. It leaves you wondering how on earth you get from that to. . .change we can believe in.

Disclosure: Vargas is a former colleague of mine at the Post.