February 08, 2010

Questions, Questions Everywhere!

The past two weeks have been exciting ones for all you government transparency wonks in the US.

Last Thursday, President Obama paid an unprecendented visit to the Congressional House Republicans annual retreat in Baltimore, just north of Washington, DC, for what turned out to be a rarely before seen exchange between two branches of government. For more than an hour, President Obama spoke and took questions; the mood among the 400 or so people present ranged from stern and combative to light-hearted and conciliatory. Many scored it a political win for the President, but a significant bipartisan cadre of people have come out in support of holding frequent "Question Time" periods with the POTUS and Congressional leaders.

With momentum following a well-received State of the Union Address and the House GOP Q&A last week, Obama kept himself visible this week, holding more open forum events broadcast online: an open Q&A follow-up to the State of the Union on YouTube, a live webcast from a low-dollar grassroots fundraiser in Washington largely attended by younger supporters, and several live roundtable talks with administration officials. We're still crunching the numbers at PoliticsOnline World HQ, but on the face of it, Obama's exposure over the past week appears to be a dramatic shift from the quieter role he assumed following what some considered an over-exposed first few months as President after last year's inauguration.

PoliticsOnline founder Phil Noble, an early signer of the petition, noted, "This is a bold, simple, do-able, and important idea. That's why we signed on as early supporters." PoliticsOnline joins a diverse array of supporters from conservative strategist Grover Norquist to MoveOn's Eli Pariser.

Follow who else has signed on to over at DemandQuestionTime.com.

And as always, you can find all the White House live events over at WhiteHouse.gov/live.

Posted by Buzz Webster at 02:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)