obama was running for office in 2008. and decided when president obama won that he was going to make it his goal to be the first black president of this very old catholic high school in philadelphia. so he exchanged notes with the president about his own candidacy and shocking nobody really more than himself, he won. he became the first black president at this catholic high school. it sort of turned his life around. he'd been a struggling student before. his grades got better. he got into college. he first got into lasalle. now he's at villanova. and this exchange with the president ended up being pretty transformative for him. >> there's another picture below it. after he graduated from high school as class president, as you point out, his mother celebrated by decorating their apartment in a rundown section of south philly. at the same time she worried about how to help him pay for college when she had $28 in her account. >> $28. the truth of a lot of these stories is the economic

realities in the country. for so many of these people writing in that was the impetus to write. and in stephon's case his mother had been unemployed for a very long time. her unemployment benefits had run out. she was watching this very channel, c-span, watching session of congress, trying to see if her benefits would be extended, if there was any way she was going to be able to put this down payment toward her son's education. meanwhile, he was having this exchange with the president. and the parallels were really just stark there as they tried to figure out a way to get him into school. >> just under ten minutes left in this segment. norman, oklahoma on the line. abdel, independent. how are you? >> caller: howdy. doing well. i'm not really your regular kind of caller. i'm an international student here in the united states. and, well, i was watching c-span about your subjects. i wanted to intervene. i was wondering whether actually the president received any kind of letters from non-citizens and

also whether the fact that people who write several thousands letters to the president, does it -- my comment, my understanding is that people must feel really unrepresented through the formal system of representation in the united states. and my question would be like what do you think about po proportional represent augs, like they have in europe, for example? instead of the proper way to get yourself elected into congress, for example. what do you think about proportional representation? >> thanks, abdel. >> thanks for your questions. he certainly does get international letters. i'd say that's a fairly small piece of what he ends up reading. sometimes it's from citizens abroad, sometimes non-citizens abroad. i would guess that's maybe 5% of the mail he receives. in terms of people not feeling represented by their government, you know, i think part of this exercise sometimes is because teachers around the country, for

instance, want their students to learn how to engage with government in new and different ways. i don't think it's necessarily they don't feel present represented by their local officials or even their elected officials in congress. it's that this is one way to engage and make themselves heard. one way that a lot of this mail comes into the white house is teachers around the country still assign their students, everybody in class has to write a letter to the president, write about what's going on in your life, write about something that you think is wrong, that you complain about. sometimes they assign them to write those letters to local officials. but still they want that process with the president. >> here is a natoma canfield in the book. what's her story? >> natoma's story is probably the one that had the most impact on the country. natoma had written, she's a clean woman in ohio, and she had lost her job and her health insuran insurance. her premiums had gotten crazy

she couldn't afford it anymore. she was going to lose her parents' house. she wrote to the president explaining this, today is the last day i have insurance because i can't afford it anymore. the president ease siemz does sort that kind of narrative potential in this letter. a cleaning woman pitted against a big insurance company. had this letter copies and distributed to all members of his staff. and they decided that they wanted to invite natoma to the white house to speak with insurance companies about her trouble. they called and asked if she could come. she cleveland she couldn't come because a week after giving up her health insurance she collapsed while cleaning a barn she'd been diagnosed with leukemia and she'd been given a 35% chance to live. the president then went to her home town and gave a major speech about health care reform there. natoma sort of became this icon for health care reform. meanwhile, i was there with natoma as she was scrapping tooth and nail for her life, going through chemo day after day, and trying to survive this disease and relying on sort of

the letters she got from the president and the letters she got from around the country from people who heard about her story to fortify her strength in hard times. >> mike in florida. welcome to the program pap you're on the republican line. >> caller: yes. i believe our president is marxist. and may i explain why? >> well, what does this have to do with this segment? >> caller: i don't know. >> okay. go ahead and make your point. >> caller: okay. i have a book called "introduction to christianity" by pope benedict before he was pope. it was written before obama came on the scene, and it says lib rau libration theology is a combination of marxism and christianity to manipulate the scriptures. it's on page 14. and i have a book by richard wormbrand, who is dead now, and the book was written in '85 and he has a whole chapter on lib raugs chapter, and it's in his book "marx and satan" where he

relates maxism to satan worship. and he's got a whole chapter. and he was tortured under romanian com mifcommunists. and he testified before congress -- >> all right, caller, i'm going to let you go. not related to this segment about letters. plenty of other segments to call in on that might be related to what you bring up. sanjay in illinois. >> caller: hello? >> sanjay, is this you? >> caller: hey, guys. >> sanjay, what's your question or comment? >> caller: it's superman -- >> i think he's gone, too. let's go to another photo from the book and another story. haley thatcher. there's a picture of a haley thatcher catching a fish off the coast of suwannee, florida. tell us more. >> haley wrote like a lot of people wrote after the oil spill that the oil was coming closer and closer to this fishing cottage that had been in his

family for 60 years. it was the most important place to him in the world. and he felt like the president's response to the oil spill had been very lackluster. he's a lawyer. he wrote a very nacely written but fairly critical letter sort of critical letter explaining why he felt the president's response was inadequate and why he worried about losing this place that he treasured on the gulf coast. it was another case where the president received this letter and it started this conversation where the president came down to the gulf coast and began to sort of have these roundtables where he heard from haley and people exactly like haley about why they were scared of losing this place. heard suggestions from them on what they should do. meanwhile, haley was out in his boat in the gulf looking for oil anywhere he could and sort of fearing this stuff coming closer and closer. and during the oil spill people -- the mail room at the white house becomes this really interesting reflection of the country in that people don't just send letters, they send gifts or objects.

during the oil spill people sent z dozens and dozens of things they thought o'could be solutions. people sent bag of sand. people sent booms. anything you can imagine. there's a gift room. the white house is not allowed to accept gifts. so there's a gift room in the white house. and some of the things that are collected in there are just fascinating. when they were thinking about getting a dog, seven or eight people sent dogs thinking maybe they want their dog. when michelle obama says she's interested in hula hooping the white house mail room gets 180 hula hoops three days later. the gift room is a crazy and fascinating place. >> let's hear from somerset, kentucky. independent caller. what's your name? >> caller: yes. my name is evelyn jones. >> hi, evelyn. go ahead. >> caller: i wrote the president back in november and i didn't get no response. i wrote him about my -- my husband died nine years ago and they've kempt turning me down,

they turning me down at the v.a. he put 21 years in the army. so i wrote to obama and i never did get no response or anything, and i put in they keep turning me down and i want to know the reason why because he fought for his country so we could have a free country. okay? >> thanks for calling. i wish i could do anything about getting your letter to him. unfortunately, i seriously lack that kind of power. but what i would say is the odds of getting a response from the president are pretty close to winning the lottery. you're talking about 20,000 letters a day and maybe one or two of those is going to get a direct response from the president. it's a great thing to try. but i would also focus on, you know, writing your local officials and being dogged about pursuing those kind of people because the truth is the volume of what they're getting is going to be less. the odds that the president directly intervenes in any of these situations is pretty close

to non-existent. and -- >> go ahead, finish. >> sorry to dash your hopes there. i think trying the president's great but try the local officials, too. >> let's get megan in from lincoln, anybonebraska. independent. hi, megan. >> caller: hi. my question is -- i'd just like to say this is my first time ever calling in. i'm a federal employee, and i work under department of homeland security. my question is if i do write to the president, because i feel i have some important issues and questions i'd like answers to just due to being a disabled employee and choosing to work for the government, and if i went on disability i would make more by not working for the government and getting paid off disability. if i were to write, would it be confidential if i mentioned where i work? and does get a lot of federal

employee letters? and how does he address those to make sure that if we mention that agencies are not reprimanded possibly. >> thank you. final thought from our guest. >> it's a good question. the truth is these letters are confidential for eight years, after which they become public record. i guess part of it is how long you think you're going to be working at the place you're going to be working at. initially these letters are private. unless the president decides he wants to broadcast it in a speech. in which case the letter writers are called and their permission is required. but after he's out of office the letters he receives will become part of his presidential archive. the odds that somebody comes through and the 20,000 letters a day and how those accumulate over four years or maybe eight years in the oval office. the odds they find your letter i would say are pretty slim, but they do become public record eight years out. >> our guest has been eli saslow, staff writer for the "washington post" who's authored this book. it's titled "ten letters: the

stories americans tell their president." ten stourz from around the country and their exchanges with the president. >> thanks for having me on. i appreciate it. in a few moments a discussion of politics in the digital age. in a little more than an hour a hearing focused on legislation to protect consumer privacy online. and then a look at youth environmental activism. this memorial day weekend, three days of american history tv on c-span 3. saturday morning at 9:00 eastern, actors from hbo's "band of brothers" join easy company vets and the 101st's bill heffron. >> i said what is it, bill? you're giving me everything in the platoon to jum wp with. he said we're jumping in holland, ain't we? i said yeah. okay. what's that gots to do with me?

he said let me tell you something. how much do you weigh? i said 138 pounds. how tall are you? i said 5'4 1/2". >> hts 54 1/2. you've got to put that half in flip i said because i am 5'4 1/2". the reason you've got that, with don't want to go looking for you in spain. >> also, teddy roosevelt, wichl taft and eugene debbs, the legacy of the 1912 presidential election. and monday night at 9:00. >> december 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy. >> tour the pearl harbor visitors center with daniel martinez, chief historian at the world war ii valor in the pacific national monument. three days of american history tv. this holiday weekend on c-span 3.

this fall is the 60th anniversary of the first use of a computer to predict election results. ahead, how technology has affected politics over the years and how campaigns have used new media. from the computer history museum in mountainview, california this is a little more than an hour. >> election night 1952 introduced a new word into the american lexicon. univac. when cbs used the univac to track the eisenhower-stevenson election the computer became famous overnight, and in fact many people here may remember. the mere word "univac" became as synonymous with modern computing in the 1950s as the word "google" is to modern web searching today. and you can africa see the univac in our revolution exhibition. election nights are now the smallest part of how technology drives the modern presidential

campaign. we voters are profiled by computers. we're mobilized by tweets. we're hit up for contributions on facebook. we're mixed and matched in pools of big data. we have a great panel tonight examining the state of the art in presidential campaigns and social media 60 years after univac. chris la hain is a partner in the communications form of fabiani and la hain in san francisco. chris was special assistant counsel to president clinton and legal communications and political counsel to president and mrs. clinton as first lady. he was also campaign press secretary for the 2000 democratic presidential ticket of al gore and joe lieberman. sarah fineberg is director of policy communications at facebook. sarah was previously special assistant to president obama and senior adviser to white house chief of staff rahm emanuel. she's also served as communications director for the house democratic caucus. tucker bounds was the national spokesperson and director of rap ud response for john mccain's

presidential campaign. in 2010 he served as campaign manager and director of communications in meg whitman's campaign for governor of california. he also has served as the werner press secretary for the republican national committee. he is at facebook as well serving as management of corporate communications. our moderator is richard tedlow, professor emeritus of the harvard business school. he's author of seven books on business, 345rk9ing and management including an award-winning biography of andy grove. he's a trustee at the museum and he's the originator of the idea for tonight's panel. so please join me in welcoming chris, sarah, tucker, and richard. [ applause ] >> after you. thank you very much.

>> we all nojd get on stage without tripping. this is a huge plus. welcome, tucker, sarah zprks chris. tucker is way down there. sarah i think should be obvious. and chris is here. and i'm richard. and because i'm on the board of trustees i get to wear jeans. i actually asked permission and received it. let me just -- i'm a historian by training. let me say one or two quick words. polling has been around for a long time. if you consider modern statis c statistical technique a technology. the use of the technology of statistics in polling really didn't come on board in u.s. presidential campaigns until 1948, and then they did miss. gallup, the polls stopped early because it looked like dewey was going to defeatar truman easily, and that was the generation of

the result of a famous chicago tribune headline that said "dewey defeats truman" and that was wrong. there was a famous poll back in 1936 by the literary digest which said that landon was going to defeat roosevelt. that was wrong, too. the reason that was wrong was they took their poll by telephone and only the republicans were wealthy enough to have phones in 1936. so although the sample was huge, everybody was of -- and james farley, who was post-master general at the time, said landon's going to take maine and vermont and that's exactly what ended up happening. but then what we just saw here in a lovely clip i think is an inflection point in the history of politics in the united states and perhaps the world, i guess, which is the coming of television to politics. television, broadcasting, and the combination of that with computers, with polling, with scientific methods of sampling has changed the way elections

are run in this country and has changed the nature of politics. and so we're very, very fortunate to have as guests people who live this life and know this world as i don't personally. i mean, i don't get it. i don't understand why tweeter is going to like change the world. we had a discussion prior to this meeting, and i was told that if i'm lonely between now and election day all i have to do is move to akron, get a job in a goodyear factory, and tweet, you know, i'm a white male and i'm a factory worker here in akron and i just don't know for whom to vote. and if i just did that i'd have friends until election day. then they would all turn their backs on me and that would be the end of it. so i'd like to start off by

asking what we were just discussing in the green room, actually, which is here we saw this big inflection point 60 years ago. the world changed with television. your world. the world in which you live and have to predict the unpredictable and deal with the unfair so many times. is the world going to change with the realization we now have facebook, we now have twitter, we now have social media? and if so how is the world going to change? what is different and what's going to be different? so let's -- chris, let me ask you to start, and then we'll just go. >> first of all, thanks for having us. especially with this very august panel. and john, thank you for the introduction. i will say that, you know, sarah and i worked together on the 2000 gore campaign, and i think we could have definitely benefited from the univac in florida.

we were talking about this earlier. and i'm probably a little bit of the contrarian here. i do think that we are going to hit an inflection point. i am not sure if we are quite there yet. i think the technology, the vehicles, they do exist for the type of inflection point that you saw when television -- and to take a little bit of a step back, what happens when television, a little predated by radio but ultimately television just fundamentally changed the strategic way campaigns are run, ushered in the so-called modern era of politics. and i use this for a public and spoke analogy, but it forced everything into a hub where campaigns were able to use media, paid media but also electronic coverage to talk in a one-way conversation with the public. prior to that, you know, campaigns had been much more of a spoke -- that's a little best a hub where you actually had to depend on other people out there to be your messages, particularly in a country the size of the united states, even

100 years ago. i think what you are seeing happening now is that technology is having an impact. we're going a little back to the future. obviously, it's sort of on steroids because of the impact, the ability for information to move as quickly as it can, as intensely as it can, and particularly the ability for campaigns to actually have an interactive discourse back and forth with the public but more so than that the fact that the public themselves can have a discourse amongst themselves in much more of an active way than we have seen really over the last 50 or so years. but i'm not sure whether we have necessarily got-toten to that transformative moment. and as an analogy, and this is a little bit of a flawed one but nevertheless i'll endeavor to make it. you saw in the arab spring, right? the first time really that the proverbial pen, in this case in the form of a stweet and facebook and other social media outlets, was more powerful than the ak-47. right? now, that was a market force driving that, right? a real market force.

a real political market force. driving social change with a confluence of technology that allowed that to happen. i'm not sure that's happened in this country yet because i'm not sure we've had that type of an impetus. but i do think there are the vehicles out there for a huge impact on small d democracy because of the ability for the public really to engage in a different way than they have historically. >> that's right. i think chris makes a very good point that we may not be transformative in terms of arab spring and entire countries shifting but we are -- but what twitter and facebook and social media has done is transformed the way campaigns communicate with voters and the way people consume their media. so there was television. there's newspapers. there's radio. and i think there's a whole new world of the way people consume information, consume media, consume news, and the way that people can -- campaigns in particular can take advantage of that new platform to communicate

directly to voters without having to go on to television and get a favorable 23450ur7 sto newspaper story written. and i think it has been transformative in politics. >> tucker? >> well, as our bios pointed out, all three of us are spoekdspeople. and i think i'm at a disadvantage being the third spokesperson to this question. i do agree with sarah. but i think i'd also point out too that there are some different dynamics that technology and social media are bringing to the way the electorate is going to consume this election. and i think that what we're going to see as we've seen in the past is that technology tends to build every four years. you see a real examination by the public in engaging in thank you technologies to examine one of the most important decisions someone can make.

in terms of the news media i think that's something we're going to talk about more on the panel. i'm looking forward to it. but also there's an additional component that we'll begin to see in 2012 and probably even more so in 15 and 16, which is the way you all communicate to each other and the way you're using communications to talk to the prusted friends and family that you have. already, and we're here in the sort of -- the belly of innovation in silicon valley, there's a startup in san francisco called photosin. and it turns your voter precinct where in the past you would have been asked to go out and knock on your neighborhood doors and tell people why you should vote for that person, we're seeing that happen online. so they're take a precinct and making it virtual. and so even from the political outreach in addition to the media and communications outreach, we're seeing

technology really begin to have a profound effect on the way that elections and campaigns are waged. and so in that sense it's a really exciting time and i think we're going to see some really cool things in 2012. >> what was the name of that? voteusin? >> voteusin. >> how do they make their living? are they hired by various candidates or are they non-profit or how does it work? >> it's a very early stage company. but essentially what they do is they allow you to empower your social network. so people you may be friends with on facebook or other social networks. you can reach out to them and transmit your message and your opinions about the election you're involved in. and instead of going out and walking door to door to meet your neighbors and trusted contacts you can actually do that in your computer. it's efficient and it's a trusted form of communication. i think that votusin as a company is really hoping they can leverage that power and help

campaigns and elections in the future. and this is really their first election doing it. >> so -- please. >> i mean, it makes sense, right? so if you were a volunteer on the gore campaign in west virginia, we would ask you to come to the headquarters and make phone calls or knock doors. that doesn't really make sense now, right? if someone called me and asked me to come call through a tree of phone numbers i would think to myself if i need to contact people why don't i just contact them on facebook or send them an e-mail? it makes more sense. it's sort of the evolution of voter contact, basically, which is sort of code for the way politicians and candidates talk to voters. voter contact has just evolutionized itself to facebook, to twitter. it's just gone beyond the phone tree. >> well, that's the back to the future observation you made at the beginning, which is in the old days of retail politics it was feet on the street, people

knocking on doors. and now first of all you know the right door to knock on. and secondly you don't have to bother. you can just tweet or -- pardon f me for one second. what we just saw was broadcasting. and now you're talking marketing. >> and you saw elements of this by the obama campaign in 2008. what at the time was pretty novel, which is you had people in san francisco or california who were being recruited by the campaign to actually engage with people in swing states. now, that was done more over the phone but nevertheless people are being given lists on their e-mail and saying can you call these ten people, e-mail us what their response has been. so you saw the beginnings of that. i'm dealing with this all the time from the campaign

perspective. i think one of the elements that's going to evolve and i think tucker is right to characterize it almost as an iterative process. is the challenge of actually being able to take what we used to call voter files and they're still called voter files, right? and when you still have a voter file, people create analytics in our business we call flags. people are flagged in certain ways, right? now what you have going on and both of these two can talk about this probably more comprehensively and with more insight than i can. but intersecting the great deal online where you're able to derive an awful lot of information on their habits. obviously that bumps up into some privacy issues. but ultimately depending how that evolves you will be able to mix and mash with voter files and have information that is potentially far deeper and far more knowledgeable than we ever had. there's also the capacity with social media to match that up with the right people to have to be havinth