McCain of the Panderosa, and myself are both at the age where we have also talked back to the Radio and TV.

Michael,

Thanks for this post. You've touched on my favorite aspect of Obama's campaign and governing vision.

Obama's proposed tech policy excites me more than anything else in his policy proposals. What I see in both his policy ideas and in his campaign are indications of a genuine desire and talent for bringing politics and governing back to the grassroots level.

He has used the internet with great success to finance and organize volunteers for his campaign. They have brilliantly made use of the internet's campaign-building benefits--social networking, viral marketing through You Tube, etc.--which are free venues for promotion of Obama's so-called movement.

I've had to be careful to avoid dismissing the "movement" as strictly marketing strategy. What Obama has envisioned, and what the campaign is portraying, is a new model for campaigning that, to a great degree, removes the need to involve the traditional rich and powerful sources of campaign funds. Removing the necessity to rely on rich and powerful contributors also removes the resulting need to "serve" those contributors whose interests may be incredibly narrow and often not beneficial to the general citizenry.

The fact that Obama has been so wildly successful in fundraising from the "little folks" leaves me very hopeful that this alone, whether Obama wins the general election or not, will inexorably change the nature of all future campaigns. In order to simply remain competitive, candidates will have to follow this fund-raising model. And that will mean candidates will have to solicit the financial support of the "little folks"--and both the candidate and the policy proposals will have to be appealing and convincing enough to persuade folks to donate.

Now, that's an application of the Republican Party's much-beloved free market concept I can get excited about!

It remains to be seen how successful Obama is with his plan for using the internet to make the government more transparent and "user-friendly" for the citizenry. Optimally, an internet-based venue for opening lines of communication between the citizenry and those who govern will encourage much greater citizen participation than we have seen in the past. To me, it sounds like it will be incredibly difficult to design, implement, and manage such a system. But, man! What a priceless innovation that would be!

The combined changes in both campaigning and governing could actually change the distribution of political power in this country! I don't know about y'all, but I'm ready to work for it!

No matter what your opinion of Barack Obama or his policies may be, I hope that you will see how big just these changes would be. If we're careful, work hard, and have luck on our side, these things could change our country's politics and government--in the best way--forever.

Laura, I attended the Web.2 Expo in SF last month and the web and social networks are now bypassing old institutions...as people help each other in stead of relying on the old dysfunctional corporate and political machines...

This is just beginning.

Dean almost pulled this off in 2004, but lacked Obama's social orgainization skills. Dean was like a Wright brother's plane. Obama is attempting a moon landing.

I also see on the political blogs a poor understanding of this by both pundits and posters, but that's OK. People still do not understand the new paradigm. The nuerons that make up the emerging digital brain still cannot see that they make up this emerging digital brain...

Michael

Go for it...

;)

Make history.

There has always been a small mass that has changed history....even with all this bloggermania. These bloggers are still a minority, but a bigger one than before and that's important.

M