#AskObama: President gets 169,395 questions from citizens...and the House Speaker & a New York Times columnist...and bashes corn ethanol...Thirty followers from the @WhiteHouse Twitter account were invited to watch as President Obama took questions on jobs and the economy--and a range of other issues--during Wednesday's first-ever Twitter Town Hall, held in the East Room. The 2:00 PM event was moderated by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who announced that in a recent analysis of a million tweets from across the globe, the President's name was mentioned in about half. At that, President Obama entered the East Room to cheers and applause. Clad in a dark suit, he kicked things off by sending a tweet from the @WhiteHouse account. (Above: Dorsey watches as the President tweets)
"I am going to make history here as the first president to live tweet," President Obama said.
"It's only a hundred and forty characters," Dorsey reminded the President, to laughter, as he took his time typing.
"in order to reduce the deficit, what costs would you cut and what investments would you keep - bo" President Obama tweeted (sic), then explained what he had written.
"The reason I thought this was an important question...we are going through a spirited debate here in Washington, but it's important to get the whole country involved," President Obama said. "I'd love to hear from the American people, see what thoughts they have."
But President Obama posing his own question on Twitter caused a bit of confusion among followers, who were looking for answers from the President, not a question; the event had been promoted as an opportunity to query the President. More than 60,000 questions had been submitted by noon using the hashtag #AskObama, according to the White House. And by the end of the event, according to Twitter and Mass Relevance, which coordinated data analysis, there were a total of 169,395 questions, with the hot topics being 23% about jobs and the economy; 18% about the budget; 18% about taxes; and 11% about education. A screen with a colorful digital map of the US was on one side of the stage, and it showed real time locations of where the tweeted questions were coming from.
Dorsey announced that neither he nor the President knew which questions were going to be asked, saying this was "driven entirely by the Twitter users," and then began reading questions to the President. These had been boosted forward by eight Twitter users selected to be regional "curators" for the Town Hall, Dorsey said. The questions covered education, the debt ceiling, the possibility of the US defaulting, the recession and unemployment, taxes, hiring veterans, and small business issues. The President and First Lady were $60,000 in debt after they finished law school, President Obama said, sympathizing with his audience.The questions included one from House Speaker John Boehner (using @JohnBoehner), the most powerful Republican in Washington, followed by one from New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. Both questions caused cries of protest on Twitter, not because of the subject matter, but because it seemed unfair that both a journalist and a politican, who theoretically have far more access to the President than the average citizen, were using up time.
"Srsly. @johnboehner could have asked his "question" in person on the golf course a few weeks ago," tweeted @phillipanderson.
"First we have Boehner, now Nicholas Kristof...we thought the purpose of this townhall was for everyday Americans to get the mic. #askobama" tweeted @TheRoot247.
"Oh good," President Obama said when Dorsey announced the question from Boehner.
"After embarking on a record spending binge that’s left us deeper in debt, where are the jobs? #AskObama" Boehener tweeted. He'd been tweeting questions all morning, as were other lawmakers from both sides of the aisle.
"John obviously needs to work on his typing skills," The President said, when the tweet had some strange marks on it as it appeared on the screen set up on the stage. He then, to audience laughter, noted that Boehner has Republican bias, "so this is a slightly skewed question."
"But what he’s right about is that we have not seen fast enough job growth relative to the need," President Obama said.
He added that "eventually the Speaker will see the light" on economic issues, and later said that when it comes to the economy, "you're entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts."
Corny issues...
The second part of the event was devoted to the President responding to Twitter users' follow-up comments to his answers to the questions from the first part of the event. And that was when the one mention of food and agriculture came during the Town Hall, as President Obama responded to a statement from @Mostlymoderate, who wrote: "Cut subsidies to industries which are no longer in crisis or are unsuccessful, cotton, oil, corn subsidies from ethanol."
The President responded:
"Well, there’s been a interesting debate taking place in Congress recently. I’m a big supporter of biofuels. But one of the things that's become clear is, is that we need to accelerate our basic research in ethanol and other biofuels that are made from things like woodchips and algae as opposed to just focusing on corn, which is probably the least efficient energy producer of these various other approaches.
And so I think that it’s important for even those folks in farm states who traditionally have been strong supporters of ethanol to examine are we, in fact, going after the cutting-edge biodiesel and ethanol approaches that allow, for example, Brazil to run about a third of its transportation system on biofuels. Now, they get it from sugar cane and it’s a more efficient conversion process than corn-based ethanol. And so us doing more basic research in finding better ways to do the same concept I think is the right way to go."
The comments about corn ethanol are guaranteed to cause some outrage in the larger corn states. The President's home state, Illinois, is the fifth largest corn producer in the US.
The event was livstreamed as well as followed avidly on Twitter, but #AskObama never trended nationally on Twitter, though it was appearing in local trend lists, according to ObFo followers. Twitter also never crashed during the event, as it usually does when there is some kind of major event with users flooding in with comments. Check out the @TownHall and @WhiteHouse tweetstreams for a recap of all that went on.
The Town Hall closed with little ceremony after the President took a few minutes to defend federal investments, pointing out that government-funded research has all kinds of benefits.
"You would not have Twitter if the Department of Defense, at some point, and a bunch of universities hadn’t made some investments in something that ended up being the Internet," President Obama said. "And those were public goods that were invested in."
He shook hands with the East Room guests as he made his exit. The full transcript of the event IS HERE. The White House briefing from before the event IS HERE.
"OMG. I'm at the White House. Less than 10 feet away from the most powerful man in the world! May just faint... #WHTweetup" wrote @lieselolson, one of the @WhiteHouse followers invited to the event.
"Cannot believe I was one of thirty of the President's twitter followers to be invited to the first ever @townhall #WHTweetup" wrote @margietime, another guest.
The White House list of those invited to be part of the event, referred to as the #WHTweetup, is here.
More background on the event from the White House:
Twitter partnered with tech company Mass Relevance to "curate, visualize and integrate conversations" for the event, and they created the digital map that was lighting up on stage as the President spoke.
"Mass Relevance data helps make the questions regionally and topically diverse and provides insight into the most popular topic areas. Algorithms behind Twitter search will identify the Tweets that are most engaged via Retweets, Favorites and Replies," according to the White House.
The "team of seasoned Twitter users" who helped "flag questions from their communities through retweets":
• Iowa - @willwilkinson. Blogs about American politics for The Economist.
• Minnesota - @Kara_McGuire. Personal finance columnist at the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
• Illinois - @RamanChadha. Professor at DePaul University’s Coleman Entrepreneurship Center.
• North Carolina - @steven_norton. Former @dailytarheel editor-in-chief. He will be a senior at UNC and this summer is a business intern at @theobserver.
• Louisiana - @KimQuillenTP. Business Editor at The Times-Picayune.
• California - @AssignmentDesk1. Online content producer for North County Times in California.
• New Hampshire - @DrewHampshire. Editorial page editor at the NH Union Leader.
• At Large - @Modeledbehavior. Karl Smith is an assistant professor of econ at UNC and an economics blogger.
Related: An ObFo post about the President's Facebook Town Hall in April is here. It took place at the Silicon Valley headquarters, and also focused on jobs and the economy. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg served as moderator.
*Photos by Pete Souza/White House; top photo was Photo of the Day on the White House blog
