-- or the sky is going to fall. ladies and gentlemen, that is what we call in clay county a crock. [laughter] in this budget that i will be sending you, general fund agencies will receive the same amount of funding that they will be getting this year. no cuts. in fact, there is the potential for them to receive an increase of up to 4%. and in the education budget, that budget this year in this budget will increase funding for schools by over $400 million. no cuts for state agencies, more funding for our schools, without raising anyone's taxes. [applause]

. each one of us knew this day was coming, and as we did last year, our budget estimates include anticipated growth and federal funding to help states with economic recovery.

this budget is based on conservative, responsible, and realistic forecast, and they are also based on a steadfast commitment to spending discipline. we will also continue to make government more efficient. this recession has been an opportunity for our government to innovate and streamline and think of ways to spend money more wisely than we ever have, and we have done it. today, our state government is leaner. we have reduced the number of state employees and ask them to do more with less, and i am proud to say they have responded incredibly. in fact, our state has seen such amazing progress during

this time of tight budgets -- let me give you some examples. the cooperation between the departments of public safety, a transportation have made alabama's roads the safest they have been in decades. fatalities are down 50%. our medicaid agency is receiving the largest performance bonus of any state in the nation because of the effectiveness of that program. banks to -- thanks to the work of our finance department, alabama's entire text book is now online and so investors can see where every dollar of your money is being spent -- taxpayers consumer every dollar of your money is being spent. [applause]

because of a truly outstanding work done by our department of human resources, more children were adopted in alabama last year than ever before in the history of this state, bu. [applause] let me take a personal moment. i want to go thank patsy for working with foster parents and dhr to make adoptions of priority, and i want to thank you for everything else you have done in the past seven years to

help children, to help families, and to make alabama a better place. thank you, sweetheart. [applause] >> there are so many stories like that, literally in all sectors of government. the results of what our agencies have accomplished our real. they are dramatic. lives have been changed. more children today have

permanent, loving homes, and taxpayers -- tax dollars are spent to help our citizens and are being spent more effectively than they have ever been spent, and today, state government is more transparent and accountable than it has ever been. i want to take another moments to personally thank all of our state employees who made this possible, especially during this time of economic recession. look around you, ladies and gentlemen. the state government works the way it does today because of the people who work for state government. [applause] thank all of you. [applause] we are living within our means,

like families all across alabama, but let's remember -- tonight there are a lot of families facing much more difficult situations than we do. families who cannot even make ends meet any more, and ladies and gentlemen, that is why we must take action and take it now -- real action, right now, to get our economy moving. last year, you came together and passed landmark legislation i proposed offered incentives to knowledge-based company's, and after that happened, within only a few months, the legislation brought hundreds of new jobs to alabama. each of those jobs is a symbol

of the new opportunities we can create when we work together, when we put our differences aside and focus on what is important. we can help all of our citizens share in the american dream. you know, that does not happen often enough around here. we have got to do better, because there are so many people out there who need us, who need us at our very best, so well you have succeeded in passing the first part of our economic plan, you fail to pass the other key part -- a tax credit, a tax credit to encourage companies to hire unemployed workers and an incentive to create jobs in counties with the highest

unemployment rates, so during this session, you will have another chance to pass these needed proposals, and i urge you, ladies and gentlemen, to pass them quickly, because nothing is more important than returning albanians -- alabama ian's -- alabamians to the work force against giving them job security. [applause] the first proposal is a $1,500 tax credit to jump-start new jobs, a proposal but an independent economist projects will create 6000 new jobs. this idea is becoming a national

model to get people back to work. at least one other state is using our same proposal to help its economic recovery, and the president recently announced he is proposing this idea also. as others around the country are realizing tax incentives to work to create jobs, then alabama should be leading this effort, not falling behind. [applause] the second part of our recovery plan is a tax credit for new jobs in counties with the highest unemployment. a $1,500 incentive for each new job. we do that to stimulate growth where jobs are needed most, in

areas like the black belt and other rural counties. these proposals will create jobs, and they will do it immediately -- not next year, not in the next five years or 10 years, but right now when jobs are needed the most and where they are needed the most. [applause] all of us, everyone in this room know that working families are the heart of our state. they are also the heart of our economy. ladies and gentlemen, they need this help, and they need it now, but our efforts to generate

jobs do not start and end with just these ideas. in career centers across the state we're helping displaced workers learn new job skills. we train for high-tech jobs, and to qualify the jobs that they're ready to be filled. we have awarded millions in economic stimulus to help create jobs in construction, and we will never stop aggressively pursuing new jobs. during the last seven years, work done by our partners has resulted in 143,000 announced

new jobs. [applause] even now during this recession, we are continuing to see successes. hundreds of new jobs, 240 at the toyota engine plant, 1000 new jobs coming to ikea suppliers across the state. 5800 with hk motors, and 10,000 new jobs arriving on schedule because of our incredible success.

[applause] we are doing a lot as the state to help struggling families during this recession and to help our economy, but ladies and gentlemen, we must also protect our economy, keeping its standing strong against threats like the big government-funded mandates imposed upon us by congress. i urge each of you to use your voices loudly, strongly every

time congress proposes some grand scheme that ultimately places another heavy and unaffordable burden on the state. we cannot control what congress does, but there is one threat to our economy that members of this legislature can control, and that is whether to legalize slot machines in alabama. i cannot imagine anyone who thinks the best way to help our economy is to help alabamaianiao lose billions of dollars in gambling, but that is what the gambling interests want you to believe. in one county where the illegal

casinos operated, testimony showed people were losing $2 billion every year -- $2 billion in one single county. this is money? this is money that is not going to be spend at local communities and local businesses, where it would help sustain jobs, helped sustain the local economy. this money is being taken out of the county and being sent out of state slot machine and gambling barnes. just imagine how many billions more will be taken out of the pockets of alabamians if you make it legal. you talk about a rip-off?

let's understand that any scheme that will legalize slot machines under the pretext of generating new revenues is the biggest hostile in alabama's history. -- the biggest hussle in alabama's history. [applause] yet here we go again, another legislative session is starting, and you know what that means. millions of dollars are going to be spent trying to pressure each of you into making slot machines

legal for the first time and the history of our state. of course they do not call it that. they cannot. you were not born yesterday. this is nothing like bingo. these are slot machines pure and simple, and there is a reason they are illegal. they're illegal because they're bad for taxpayers, and they are buying for alabama. -- they are bad for alabama. [applause]

the devastating social cost of gambling increased crime, addictions, and domestic violence, bankruptcy, suicide, family breakdowns, and so much more are undeniable, and they are well-documented by the national gambling impact commission. let me ask you -- who ultimately pays for all of these social problems? the casino operators? not a chance. they are making money hand over fist off of this misery. it is the taxpayers who are the ultimate losers. in states with casinos, for every $1 casinos contribute in taxes, they cost taxpayers of least $3 in additional service

to deal with the devastation casinos leaves behind. ladies and gentlemen, they say those that do not remember history are doomed to repeat it. alabama has seen this before. how could we so soon forget the lessons that phenix city taught us? somebody that has not forgotten is the governor. if there is one person who knows the lawlessness and corruption gambling brings, it is him. listen to his warning in the newspapers last week. he said gambling brings the bad

people to town and brings up the bed in good people -- brings out the bad in good people. he said there is nothing about it that is good. i hope we all he is warning -- heed his warning. if you vote to let this out, you will be spending -- swimming in a pool that has more sharks than all the oceans of the world. everyone of us knows the slot machines are illegal under alabama law. no matter what you call it, electronic bingo or anything else, yet despite the clarity of that law and the clarity of the court decision, we have the slot

machine casinos operated in the state abetted by officials willing to ignore the law. if we are to fulfill our hopes to insure the laws are followed, how can we permit this violation of the laws that go on? men of women of principle must act now and decisively to ensure the rule of law is not some hollow standard cast aside whenever people with enough money and enough influence decide the laws do not apply to them. [applause]

i took an oath to uphold the laws of alabama, and as long as i am governor, i will never go back from that those -- oath. all of you took that, too. tonight, let's all of us reaffirm our commitments to the rule of loughs. -- of law. [applause]

if you really do want to bring more education dollars into the state, join me in fighting to allow public charter schools in alabama. [applause] as our state superintendent, dr. morton, who is standing in the back and is probably the best superintendent alabama has ever had and is probably the best in the nation today -- [applause] as he has said, this is alabama's best hope of winning more than $200 million for schools all across the state. you heard me right.

$200 million, but to make sure alabama can compete for these dollars, i call on this legislature to pass a charter school bill during this session. let's have an honest debate about charter schools, not one dominated by fear mongering from the defenders of the status quo. they will tell you charter schools will lead to resegregation, and that is absolutely a absurd. it is not true, and the people that tell you that no it is not true. charter schools are open to all students. racial discrimination is absolutely prohibited.

they will tell you charter schools take money away from public schools, but what they won't tell you is that charter schools are public schools, and funding for public schools is based on enrollment, sir dollars follow this just as they do now, and that is not going to ever change, so if anyone says charter schools will take money away from public schools, they are not telling you the truth. the truth is with the charter school law, we can get increased funding for public schools. for the first time, alabama will be eligible for charter school grads, and the federal funds we are competing for will not be just for charter schools.

they can be used to expand education reforms making such a huge difference in our state. during the last seven years, all of us have worked very hard to invest in these reforms because they really do have a proven record, a track record of success. did you know that today alabama is the first state in the nation to have video and wealth-based distance learning in high schools thanks to the investment you made? [applause]

almost half of our schools now have test scores that continue to rise. first-class is ranked as the highest quality pre-k program in the united states. [applause] because we put the alabama reading initiatives in every canner garden through third grade classroom -- every kindergarten through third day classroom, alabama leads the nation in gains in fourth grade reading. [applause]

it is not just football for the state of alabama is no. 1 anymore. [applause] let me take a moment now to congratulate the university of alabama, the coaches, the players, and their families, for winning the national championship, and for being such great representatives for the state of alabama -- let me take a moment now to congratulate the university of alabama, the coaches, the players, and their families, for winning the national championship and for being such great representatives for the state of alabama. [applause]

i am proud of you, mike. [laughter] yes, we compete on the national level in both football and education, but let me ask you a question. would it have been fair if alabama had to get 12 yards to make a first down and taxes only had to get 10? of course not -- tx only had to get 10? of course not. yet because we do not have charter schools, that is exactly the position we are in. we do not get to compete for education dollars on a level playing field, and that does nothing but hurt our students.

this truly is one of those defining moments in our history that compels us to push open the door of opportunity for the sake of our children and schools. get charter schools of the floor for debate. do not kill it in committee. let every lawmaker have a vote -- yes or no. it will either succeed, or it will fail, but if we do not try, then our failure is guaranteed. none of us -- no parent, no teacher, and no student should ever allow failure to be inevitable. [applause]

four years -- for years legislature has failed to pass a tax reform. during the last election, both parties -- republicans and democrats -- promised to ban backed by transfers, eliminate hidden pork projects, and expose what lobbyists spend on elected officials. not one of these promises has been kept -- not one. to all the members of the

legislature, ask yourself now, how many times have we come together and said when it comes to economic development there are no party lines? we have worked together, and that is one reason alabama has been so incredibly successful in bringing new jobs to our state, so why can we? why can we work together when it comes to ethics reform? we should, because accountability is not a partisan issue. whatever our differences may be, each of us has been sent here by the people to serve the people and to represent the people. [applause]

so tonight, i ask the majority party, the party that controls the agenda, to work with me and your republican colleagues to keep these promises -- tonight i ask the majority party, the party that controls the agenda, to work with me and your republican colleagues to keep these promises. every year a stand on the spot to urge you to pass these major reforms, reforms that will make government more accountable and more transparent, reforms that put limits on gifts, full disclosure of potential conflicts of interest, subpoena power and ethics commission. these are all overdue changes

that will make state government and each one of us more accountable, yet each year there is nothing but excuses as to why it does not pass or is even brought up for a vote. people deserve action -- not excuses, so i asked my friends in the majority to stop making excuses -- stop playing political games and led these reforms come up for a vote. ladies and gentlemen, what are we waiting for? [applause]

all i am asking is for each one of us to do what we promised, because each one of us is only as good as our word, and one more as saying about promises -- one more thing about promises. i believe our state made a commitment, and we need to work together -- [applause]

let's work together during this session to make sure we keep our promises to them. i told you we would have a full agenda, because when it comes to our economy, our schools, and the ethical standing of our government, we can never accept the status quo. we cannot ignore the challenges, pat ourselves on the back, and say we have done enough. no, we must take bold steps, do what is right for the future of alabama. alabama is a strong state with great people and a great future. we believe and all alabama has to offer and all it can be or else none of us would be here

tonight, and everyone of us should love alabama so much that we never accept anything less. [applause] everyone of you knows to make that happen, we are all going to after pull together like never before. we have come so far, but we're not done yet, and if we commit ourselves to lifting alabama up, if we commit to using our time, our energy, and our prayers for the good of this state, there really is no limit to what we can become and will become. seldom has history offered a

greater opportunity to help our people and this state. this is truly a critical moment for alabama and for each one of us. let us cast off partisan blinders come together and bring to alabama the light that continues to shine for generations to come. thank you all, and god bless this great state of alabama. [applause] thank you. thank you very much. thank you. [applause]

>> now the nebraska governor, david heineman's state of the state address. he is running for reelection this year. he speaks about nebraska's low unemployment rate and the economy. this is about 20 minutes. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> mr. president, mr. speaker, members of the legislature, tribal chairman, distinguished guests, friends, and felon of ruskin's -- fellow nebraskans, we have a unique opportunity to take our for steps towards new endeavors. as the state, we are in an exceptional position to become an even more extraordinary place to live, to work, and to raise a family. nebraska's financial health is stronger than most of our peers across america because working together, we have been fiscally

responsible. two months ago nebraska face a revenue shortfall. we fix this by reducing spending, not by increasing taxes. members of this body were in special session just 12 days. you pass this unanimously, and i signed it into law immediately. no other state has acted as swiftly or spoken with one voice as nebraska has in recent months. senators, thank you for your work during the 2009 special session. as a result, we are positioned to continue moving nebraska ford. new -- nebraska forward. my focus for the coming years to prepare our state to take advantage of new opportunities. my vision for ensuring a strong

future for nebraska is some of by three priorities -- growing our economy, strengthening education, and developing an even more efficient government. growing our economy means an everyday focus on job creation. our efforts to modernize nebraska's economic incentives programs that lowers taxes and to prioritize investments have resulted in a stronger, more stable economy in nebraska than in the rest of the country. in 2005, i worked with this body, and we enacted the most comprehensive reform of our economic development programs since the 1980's. i am pleased to report that the nebraska advantage is exceeding our expectations. since its passage, 195 companies have decided to expand or relocate in nebraska.

these companies plan to invest $5.3 billion in our economy. when all projects are completed, nearly 16,000 new jobs will be created. even as the national economic slowdown is impacting all steps, our recruiting efforts continue to pay dividends. 15 months ago, one of america's most well-known technology companies announced it would locate the data center and customer service center in the omaha area. both projects will be operational this year. last month, a california technology co. announced it was locating in grand island. this company will create 200 new jobs over the next three years. in september, a successful and nationally known retailer headquartered announced the expansion of its distribution center using funding from nebraska's community development

block grant program. that same program is helping the community's of aurora and others develop new industrial sites for future economic growth. last april, two central nebraska companies announced a partnership that created 25 new jobs in central city, producing custom made cabinets that had been previously manufactured in china. working with the international brotherhood of electrical workers, we used funds from nebraska's worker training program to build a wind power training facility that will help repair our region prepare our workers for future growth of nebraska's -- to help prepare our workers for future growth. nebraska's insurance and financial-services industry continues to expand.

in addition to our work to create jobs, the other important element to growing nebraska's economy is our work to lower taxes. for too long, nebraska has been a high state -- high tax state, but we are changing that. three years ago we passed the lord -- largest package in the history of the state. we eliminated the marriage penalty. we lowered income taxes. prior to those changes, the tax foundation ranked nebraska as one of america's top 10 highest tax states. their survey ranked nebraska as having the 44 highest tax rate -- tax rate of the 50 states. we have successfully reduced our ranking to 33rd, making nebraska more competitive and business friendly. that is progress, but we have

more to do. taxes are still too high. the key to lowering taxes is to control spending. it requires difficult choices, and it requires we prioritize our investments. during this national economic slowdown, we have seized the opportunity to make nebraska more competitive. many states have raised income or sales taxes. nebraska has not. many states spend beyond their means. nebraska did not. we controlled our spending. because of the tough choices we have made, nebraska is receiving national attention. according to forbes, nebraska is one of the top 10 states for business. business week written nebraska is one of the top 10 states for struggling americans, were they can find us a fresh start. main street.com greg nebraska

for the number one state for prosperity in their happiness -- ranked nebraska for the number one state for prosperity in their happiness index. cnn money just published their ranking of the top 10 best places to live in america for jobs. three of the top eight places for jobs in america are in one state -- nebraska. they are platte county, madison county. there is more good news. the latest u.s. census bureau estimated that nebraska's population growth in 2009 compared to the national growth rate was our best performance in nearly 50 years. nebraska is and the move in typical nebraska fashion, making deliberate, discipline, steady, and responsible growth.

however, the next 12 to 18 months will be a time of uncertainty for our economy. historical a as the national economy begins to recover, state tax revenues began to lag behind. to build on the progress of the past few years, it will be critical that we solve any additional revenue shortfalls by remaining committed to reducing spending, preventing any future tax increases is crucial to continuing nebraska's economic progress. tax increases are job killers, not job creators. whether it is a special session or a regular to -- regular legislative session, i will oppose any attempt to increase income or sales taxes on nebraskans. the second key element is strengthening nebraska's education system. the world is changing.

our task is to prepare our sons and daughters to compete in a knowledge-based technology- driven global free market economy. today's jobs require higher reading and math skills than was true 20 years ago. in order to prepare our students for the 21st century workplace, we need to transform our education system from preschool all the way through college. we have begun that reform by restructuring the nebraska p16 initiative. this includes education leaders and policy makers. as the new chair of the nebraska p16 initiative, i am pleased to beat working closely with my fellow cochairs, including senator greg adams, commissioner of education, univ. of nebraska president, and the president and

ceo of education quest foundation. we are united in our efforts to strengthen nebraska's education system. for all students to succeed, nebraska and needs a common set of career-ready and college- ready academic standards. one of our first goals was to update nebraska's high school graduation requirements by supporting a core curriculum of four years of english and three years of math, science, and social studies. i am pleased to report that the state board of education has adopted these new high school graduation requirements, starting with the 2014, 2015 academic year, and just minutes ago, i approved the rule 10 regulation, updating nebraska's graduation requirements for the first time since 1984.

furthermore, the road to economic prosperity for us as a state and for individual students is a good education. the road out of poverty into a good job is a good education, and a good education starts with parents and early learning activities at home. it continues with outstanding early childhood learning programs, and as our children and one of nebraska's 253 school districts, the focus must be on learning. students' success in the classroom is directly related to quality teachers in increased parental -- and increased parental involvement. that is why in 2007 and began collaborating with the nebraska association of school boards on a new award recognizing school districts that are successful in increasing parental involvement. in the last three years we have honored school districts from

garden county, sutherland, st. paul, grand island, madison, and others for their parental involvement programs. as good as nebraska schools are today, they must be even better in the future. increasing student achievements means putting a high quality teacher in every classroom, high quality principal in every school, and a high quality superintendent in every school district, eliminating academic achievement gas means changing the status quo. for example, high truancy rates are unacceptable. superintendents, parents, law enforcement, and other community agencies need a high-profile effort to insure students are in school every day.

nebraska needs to reform its school day and school year. the needs of students have changed dramatically during the past century, yet our american education system continues to rely upon the the hundred-year- old school calendar. school districts need to examine their current school day and school year with a focus on increased lending opportunities. school leaders and parents must work together to develop effective strategies, to use time more effectively. tomorrow, commissioner reed and i will be submitting nebraska's race to the top application to the federal department of education. our commitment includes working with the university of nebraska to development a new virtual hih school that will provide rigorous academic programs. imagine how a nebraska virtual high school could expand

learning opportunities beyond the traditional school day and school year for both students and teachers. every school district plans -- stands to benefit from this effort. for rural and urban school districts, it will provide access to a wider range of rigorous academic subjects, such as foreign languages and advanced math and science classes. for school districts for parents without internet access at home, schools can keep buildings open later in the evening. imagine student spending more time in a virtual classroom from 3 hickock 30 until 8:30 p.m. and less time -- 3:30 p.m. until 8:30 p.m. and less time in the streets involved in gang activities. imagine accessing the virtual high schools from their home, a library, or community center during the summer with

innovative -- during the summer. with innovative thinking, we will expand opportunities well beyond the traditional school day and school year. in nebraska we have an opportunity to create an education system with higher student achievement, increased accountability, improve teacher and principal effectiveness, and a reform school day and school year. change of this magnitude will require a redirection of current financial resources at school district level, including diverting resources from lawyers and lobbyists to the classroom. it will require a continued privatization of state resources, and i will continue to prioritize education. the focus must be on student learning, both individual achievement and student growth. in the 21st century global economy, we must recognize that today's students need more than

a high-school education. today's jobs require at least two years of college, and in many cases, four years of college. that is when nebraska needs a top-10 college rate and affordable access to higher education institutions. like our k-12 school districts, the university of nebraska, our state colleges and private colleges and universities need to reexamine their educational processes. students need a clear path to degree completion in four years, not six years. our colleges and universities need to prioritize their investments as well as redirecting financial resources to hire priorities. strengthening in nebraska's education system from preschool to college is essential to nebraska's future success. now is the time to focus our

attention on building an education system that meets the needs of modern students competing in the modern world. the final component to keep nebraska moving forward is to continue to develop a more efficient government by reforming the delivery of government services, by using technology state government can become more efficient and more productive. for example, nebraska is developing a statewide radio system to allow city, county, state, and federal agencies to communicate with each other. this project is a perfect example of how innovation can provide enhanced public safety that benefits every nebraskan. in addition, the technology that allows nebraskan steer file taxes -- nebraskans to file taxes electronically has increased productivity and lowered costs. when an 71% of nebraska's tax

returns were filed electronically last year. we have one of the highest rates in a the nation. the department of health and human services is using technology to improve client services and modernize the delivery of economic assistance programs through a series of online applications known as access nebraska. more than 56,000 nebraskan have taken advantage of the ability to apply for services online since last september. more than 30% of our citizens applying online do so outside of traditional work hours. once fully implemented, the federal and state budget savings will be more than $5 million annually. some of our most popular on-line services include hunting and fishing licenses from the nebraska game and parks commission, and the feature

offered by the department of rhodes, providing real-time information on weather and road conditions across the state. last year, more than 434,000 hunting and fishing licenses were purchased online. the department logged more than 700,000 visits in december alone and more than 1.3 million visits in 2009. ladies and gentlemen, although 2010 will be a challenging year for nebraska and all states, it is essential that we continue to position nebraska for future growth. a road map is clear, and my focus will be a three priorities -- growing our economy by focusing on job creation, strengthening in nebraska's education system so that our students can compete in the 21st

century economy, and developing a more efficient government for greater use of technology. we have worked hard to position nebraska as an attractive place to live, to work, and to raise a family, and i am confident in the year ahead, that will provide us with new opportunities to move nebraska ford. thank you very much. .

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seminars. it is just over one hour. ♪

>> good morning, ladies and gentlemen. i am the senior program manager for academic seminars with the washington center for internships and academic seminars here in washington d.c. for over 30 years we have had over 42,000 alumni come through our internships program in washington d.c. where we place students with substantial internships in coalition with academic courses and additional programming that turns them full-time credit at their home institutions. we currently work with over 850 colleges and institutions from the country and worldwide. our web site is www.twc.edu. the students we have here today are all purchase vince in a two week seminar called, "inside washington." this week we are focusing on

politics and the media. they represent 60 different colleges and universities and we are happy to have them here. we have two panels this morning. first, a panel sponsored by a partner with the washington center, the graduate school for political management here at george washington university. they will be hosting this panel on a new media. i want to introduce you to the moderator in the center seat and allow him to introduce his panel. he works at the graduate school the university and works in new media and marketing. he's the founder of p oliticsunder30.org. he is in charge of the politics on-line conference this year. two years ago bryce was in one of these seats as part of "

insider washington 2008." he is a long like you will be in a matter of hours. -- he is an alum. >> how is everyone doing this morning? we are here at the graduate school of political management at george washington university four blocks from the white house in the center of politics. what will we talk about this morning? we are going to talk about new media and it is a wide subject. what i thought i would do is that i would start out with the landscape. today, as americans, we have access to over one trillion web sites. just on your iphone alone, you have access to 65,000 apps. every minute, according to youtube,m there are 20 hours of

video a bloated every minute. -- 20 hours of the uplo -- upload. the average teen texts 2,272 times per month. there are two million emails cents per day and i that 90% are spam. . .

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she has worked as a program manager for international initiatives in korea, ukraine, haiti, and the u.s. she's a founder board member of young champions and the founder of mobile monday. and this is official, she is the funniest tweeter in d.c. you have to follow her. it's@julieg. you have to follow her. we have now the senior vice president in digital public affairs for edelman. before that, he worked from 2005 to 2007 managing all the white house online communications. he can be followed at his blog, which is capitalgig.com. and actually, he was a professor of mine at the gspm,

and he has the unique distinction of writing, producing, and directioning both of the barney cams, which was george w. bush's dog. >> two of them. >> yeah, two of them so. this is our amazing panel, and we're going to get started right away. my first question actually is for david. whitehouse.gov right now is the center of online politics today. my question for david is, there are a lot of parameters that constrain whitehouse.gov that don't constrain businesses and nonprofits. talk about those parameters. >> sure. first, thanks for the invitation to be here today. it's a accomplish tour discuss something i really have a passion for. what's interesting is when it comes to the web, i think oftentimes, because it's so new -- i mean, i remind people i was only the third internet director that ever existed at the white house, so president clinton was the first internet president clinton.

president bush was the first digital president, because eames the first one that began and ended his presidency online. and president obama, i believe, has the ability to become the first social media president. as we figure out what all that means, what happens online in the dot-gov property is different than a dot-com property. there are many rules and regulations that govern how one can communicate with constituents and vice verse a. for example, one of the challenges -- when i was there from 2005 to 2007, spud tube was just founded in 2005. twitter was not yet around, well, it it was around in 2007, but it was new. facebook, when i was at the white house, was merely limited to those who had college email addresses. you had to be a member of a college or a higher education institution to be on the network. and so, for us, we were monitoring all these things. it was interesting to us, but we didn't know how it applied to governing because it was so

new. and although youtube was founded in 2005, it wasn't until google purchased it that it really changed the landscape in 2006. and then in 2008, spud tube actually surpassed yahoo as the second most highest ranked search engine, so people are going to youtube or before yahoo. and, of course, number one is google. we were look at that time and figuring out how to leverage such a way to not violate the policies and guidelines, that we were respecting people's privacy, and that we were adhering to the presidential records act, which says all written forms coming into and out of the white house must be preserved. we can post things to facebook, but in terms of engaging with people on facebook, they're right now trying to figure out from the comment policies and other ways, how can we archive that? so four or eight years from now, can we zip that you will, ship it over to the archives so that historians for decades and

generations to come can look back at the conversations we're dealing with today? >> i just wanted to actually jump in, if i can, because i wanted to challenge one thing you said about the whitehouse.gov being the center of the political universe. i don't think it is, and it's no knock on the obama or bush white house, because ainge lot of points david made about the constraints on official government web sites, much different than what you were able to do in the campaign, for example, lot more freedom there. and from the media standpoint, just as one time television journalism was basically three big television networks with tab lets coming down every night at 6:30, it's completely different now. television and internet journalism, and so that basically you've still got abc, cbs, nbc doing their thing, getting million dollars of people -- people forget, that every single night. it's not as bad off as some people make it out to be, but yet it's splintered. you know, you've got the cable

networks, you've also can have joe smith coming out of college. one of you can grab a flip cam and can start posting things on youtube and can be covering -- all it takes, covering the white house, covering congress. maybe till not be as ground breaking as somebody at cnn or somebody at abc, but you're out there. and it can be read. it can be heard. and i think the same way with web sites, i think that the center of the political universe is not whitehouse.gov. cnn.com was just redesigned, millions of people check it out every single hour. get being back at 6:30, everybody used to wait, what happened at the white house today. it's constantly being updated at cnn, you know, on cnn television around the world. but constantly being updated on cnn.com, web sites like politte co-, people jumping in, and i think the twitter thing -- i remember when i was a kid watching white house coverage and sam donaldson was the guy when i was a kid.

and he was always, you know, sort of shouting and booming voice, shouting at ronald reagan. that was sort of when i first started watching white house coverage. when i came to washington as a young reporter, i was at a press dinner one time. i think it was ted koppel was roasting sam donaldson or something like that, and his joke about sam donaldson, who i've since met and is a wonderful journalist and wonderful person, ted koppel said something like, if television had not been invented, sam donaldson would have gone door-to-door. he just would have been in your face, would have gone door-to-door. nange way with what we're doing now with social media, journalists are going door-to-door. even if you don't see our report at a specific time on television, we're pushing it to you on your iphone through the redesigned cnn.com. anderson cooper right now in haiti, if urent following him on twitter, you should be, because the lights may go out on his show at midnight. he's doing two-hour live programs every night from

haiti, but on twitter and other social media, the reports continue throughout the night and are on cnn.com. and so, in a way, we are going door-to-door now. because you don't just have that one at 6:30 p.m., getting that one romplet it's constantly being updated. >> how in this world of splintered media, where you can go 50 million places for your information, how are campaigns going to cut through that to reach pope terrible voters? >> well, it's an excellent question. i think that what you'll see is -- and are already seeing -- is campaigns choosing not just one, but to go through multiple routes. so now each year there seems to be a new tool or a new website that they need to have a presence o. you know, facebook isn't only social networking website out there. you need to have -- if you're an active campaign, you might want to have profiles on multiple social networking sites. twitter, leak david said, didn't exist a couple of years ago, now it's an essential

tool. and so campaigns are seeing all these different avenues to get information out there, and i think rightfully so, they're realizing that each presents a unique opportunity. a twitter account with 140-character limit isn't going to allow you to deliver policy news or something like that. on the other hand, youtubal lose to you deliver a video a couple of minutes long giving a great variety of information. just to give one example, the mcdonald campaign in virginia for governor, which was successful, he was a republican, and he set up an account, which is something that's relatively new, and he use it had to drive all his social networking activities. that's in contrast with the obama campaign, which actually tried to make its own social networking website.

there wasn't something for them to customize. so as you see these larger campaigns try on you night tools, the ones that work are going to be followed by smaller campaigns, and that goes all the way down to county, the county level t. doesn't need to be a presidential campaign. >> if you are ad vigse a campaign going into 2010 here, how much of your resources, time, money, staff do you put into new media? >> that's as much a tur argument, because so many campaigns feel like they bare have the enough money to get by in the first place. we talk about the amount of money that's raised on campaigns ark lot is spent immediately. a lot of it is spent on grass roots activities. a lot is spent on television advertising. so historically -- well, historically within the context of the last eight to 12 years -- the online politics community has really had to struggle to get resources within a campaign, financial

resources. but also human resources, to do all of the things, to update all of the sites, and to engage people in a real one-on-one conversation online that they need. i think it's going to be really hard for campaigns from here on out to figure out where to focus their disciple resources. i don't think that there's one right answer for everyone. but that i think most people have realize now that it's going to take a lot more effort, lot more man power, and a lot more money, and i think that they're going to turn to younger people, people in college and people right out of college who are willing to put in a lot of hard work, who are savvy with the technology. and who are really engaged in the political world, and they're going to step up and fill those roles and probably not get paid very much money to do it, but be part of the political process and be involved in what's going on. >> but i do think what's changing, and what i've seen change because i was working in the private sector, building web sites for members of congress and dot-gov sites,

that new media people, -- first of all, in the past, they've had more of a seat at the table, number one. so the first cycle, it was we're putting out a prerelease, slap it up on the web. and the web person would be to post it to the website, and it would be done. there's no way to disseminate it. that's web 1.50. it's 29.0 stuff and the engage 789 stuff, and the sites that help show that information that grew that power. so as that began to grow, the folks on the new media side became a little bit more involved in some of the senior decisions, and now i think the concept putting off into a separate bucket is totally the wrong way to go, because digital should be into everything you're doing, because you're reaching people in various ways. oftentimes clients will say, how do we reach this audience? well, how would you reach you? what do you do? are you on twitter, faceback, youtube, email, blogs? 90% of people may go to the web for the first time to seek out

information, but they're often linking to mainstream media sites. and pew just came out yesterday with a new study that supported that. so in terms of that level of credibility that's out there, your campaign manager should be your new media manager. and one note about the haiti thing that i thought was interesting, so we're talking about mobile technology yesterday, and a friend of mine who works at the red cross, i'm sure you've all seen the note, text haiti to 90999, so the red cross, in the past 36 hours, has raised $5 million as of about 7:00 last night through that mobile campaign. and so the ability to raise money online i think has had a huge impact on campaigns. and so i think what we may be seeing is a shift from, instead of putting money towards traditional television advertising, where you're not reaching people and it's harder to measure, maybe towards mobile and other types. >> using time and money where

have you lived spent would have been cost prohibitive. you see it t in campaigns as well. there's a big race in massachusetts for senator kennedy's old seat, and the republican, scott brown, did a big internet push three, four days ago, ratesed something like $1.3 million in 24 hours. the democrats also have a lot of scommone they're raise ago lot online, but he made pretty big impact there, because not only was it money he can spend in the final week, but we're talking about it still. it's sort of -- it created news stories that, wait, maybe there's momentum there. now there's a poll saying he's up four points. but the point is that it became a new story in and of itself, because this guy that not a lot of people heard of, well, where's that you will money coming from? maybe there's momentum here, and so that's driving some of the coverage in the race. >> switching from these professional brands of a candidate or a business to the individual, and this is open to anyone. talk to the young person out there who needs to build their personal brand. what should they be doing to

build that brand, and what should they be doing to defend and maintain that brand? >> i think a piece of it is the issue of trust. there's a fabulous researcher at m.i.t. who looks at how people build identities and build trust in online environments. and part of this ties into your social capital online. what are you actually doing when you go online? how are you interacting with people? are you socially grooming sneem are you wishing them happy birthday? are you retweeting something they said that you think is wit snie are you making them feel good? what are you dwhoog you're online? are you an active participant in some kind of a community? it's a way that builds up your personal profile. for me, that level of trust is very individual. it's very personal. i think it's hard to have a brand that people trust, but you can have a person that people trust, a person that people turn to for news, for

information, for a recommendation on what to do after work toad, or insights into what's going on in haiti. and i think all of that ties into what you do when you're online, how you treat others when you're online, and how much time you spend engaging in the new media environment. >> so pugh calls this the digital footprint. we talked about this in our class. and your digital footprint is comprised of two things, things that you publish about yourself and things that others publish about you, so you control what you publish about yourself. so you're blogging or twittering, if you're doing nice things online or dropping snarky comments under your actual name, mind you, a lot of people like to hide under fun, online names, and they do that for a reason, so when you google their actual name, it doesn't show up in the results, so things you're publishing about yourself and then there's things others are publishing about you. so if you are a corporate brand or a person, that could be --

let's say if you're in college and you do something on your college campus and there's an article about you and your role in student government or community service or athletics or whatever it is, that is all forming an impression. so if i'm a future employer or seeking out information about you based on those search terms, i'm forming an impression about you before i have ever met you. so you can't control what others publish about you, but you can certainly influence it. >> also, i think another way to look at it from media in particular, the brand you have for yourself and the brand you have in the company you're with, my handle is edhenrycnn, so there's even more weight behind it to me, because anything i post is not just about me, it's got the cnn brand on it. it's not just frivolous things, things not just embarrassing, but to you or your company. but even if up dent have the

company brand in there, people associate with you that company or with that campaign if you're working on the obama campaign, and if you just had your own name without the cnn at the end and you still said something stupid or ridiculous, people are still going to connect that back to where you work, who you associate yourself with. so you've got to be conscious, i think very conscious of that digital footprint. >> but i think the web has muddled that line between personal and professional. i think if now it's personal brand entirely, and that's why you'll see on twitter accounts, it will say, my day job, i'm in p.r., but tweets and opinions are my own. and even on my blog, of a disclaimer because there might be something that i might take a position that one of my clients might be against or for, and i just say, listen, these opinions are mine, so it might be influenced by what i do, but a lot of people are trying to keep the lines pretty stark, but it's more difficult to do that. >> just to add quickly, an example of that, just now people when they're calling bloggers, they're more interested in what that blogger thooze say than necessarily the

platform it's on. so you can have a blogger be very popular, switch completely to a new organization and keep a large amount of the interest and followers. but at the same time, they have to be cognizant, like you just said, what brands they're associating themselves with as well. so if that brand or that new platform is dramatically different, if they switch from the newspaper to another, for example, that will impact their personal brand as well so. very much goes both ways. >> julie, the new technology and augmented reality, being able to, you know, hold up your cell phone and be able to digitally overlay what's around you, the question first is how is augmented reality going to be used in campaigns and in politics? how can it be? you can answer that question. >> right now, it's a really cool tool, because you can take your phone and hold it up and download an app and get all of the reviews for what's going on

around you. i mean, that part of it is really cool, it sounds like something you'd read about in a sci-fi novel, and it's really town play around with, but can you imagine getting to the point where you hold up your iphone and every time you turn direction you get a different political message from somebody? eventually the more we use these tools, the more we're going to produce a lot of noise and a lot of crap and a lot of spam, and we're going to start tuning them out. so for me, right now my interest in this new field of augmented reality is how can we use it to do something really interesting while people are still excited about it and what is that going to evolve into so that we can jump on it when that next evolutionary step occurs? >> well, knowing your point about noise is important, too, because there are so many different kinds of social media and whatnot, that users are very smart and are able to figure out what they think is noise, what they like, and speaking from a media organization, you know, if you send out a tweet that is sort of frivolous or that is really

not value add, you know, what's the point of kind of tweeting about things on twitter that people can get almost anywhere? you know, they want to know something different, what's the white house correspondent picking up that you may not have seen in a report just yet because it's just on the surface, it's just a little tidbit, something like that. and if i think if you just throw out things, you're going hear back quickly. for political candidates, if you're just using the web to spam people, it's going to blow back in your face so quickly that it's almost a self-correcting mechanism. >> there's another cool study that looks at the issue of cognitive overload, which a lot of people tend to face, especially slightly older people tend to face where they just feel overwhelmed. >> she tilted her head at the bald guy. >> overwhelm and had a bit shell-shock when had they go online. they looked at how people use

online data sites. they don't limit some of your choices based off of personality, your sevens humor, or tastes, tend to overwhelm people so much that they spend last time evaluating the right potential mates for them. but web sites that help limit those choices actually allowed people some way, on some cog any testify level, to spend more time evaluating who was right for them, and i think we can apply that to, more broadly to the world of information and political information as well. there is a lot of stuff out there. this opens up endless possibilities for research, opinion, about what's going on online, and people are going to turn to and hone in on sources that they trust. there are sources that have good social capital over a period of time. we're not a bunch of idiots using the internet. we're smart people, and we're going to figure out who's producing good content and focus on the people, those individuals, and those media organizations and block out the

rest of the ones. i'm sexaw that's why twitter launched a twitter list, so you can help try to parse some of the content that's coming in by interest or subject or what have you. there's a british scientist named dunbar, have you ever heard of the dunbar 150? he talks about the fact that the human brain can only manage about 150 active relationships at one time. that may mean you can know 2,000 people,,000 people from childhood to present day, but in terms of your dunbar 150 -- leak right now we're all part of the 150, because we're all in the same room. but if we know each other, we might move into our daily stuff, we lose track of folks, and then someone's bfert day pops up, now they enter your 150. the brain cannot manage 10,000 facebook friends, it just can't. stuff comes piling in, you have to decide. you might thumb up something or you can share something, but then you go off and you do work, you know? you can't be looking at that

all day. maybe some of you are, but the human brain simply can't manage that. whatever the medium is, you have to qualify what's a value, and your brain makes the quick-snap judgment, and what am i learning from this person or entity that's enriching and enhancing my life? >> one interesting way of going back to augmented reality, though, that it could impact that is basically it's the concept that wherever you're going, you're taking advantage of all the information that's out there. online, whatever. but the second step of that is that it's being customized to you. so one of the places where i heard about augmented reality was actually where they're debuting something called sect sense from m.i.t. you can go anywhere, and it would project information in frovent you based off of what it was seeing. just to give a real-world example, if you go into the grocery store, peck up a box of cereal, and it would project onto the control the cost that have cereal at other supermarkets.

custom ties to say, oh, you don't like this cereal or this has a high amount of zpat you're on a diet or something like that. there's all these different ways that you can customize it to make sure that that information is more relevant to you. i really do think that that's the future in the sense of taking advantage of all this information that is out there and what we're seeing now is just more and more information and making sure that it is relevant to you, that it's customized to you, and that it is what you're interested in. because as you mentioned, bryce, at the opening, every minute, what, what did you say, how much is uploaded to youtube? >> 20 hours. >>, so you know, literally you can never watch everything on youtube, and you need to make that decision, ok, what am i interested in or what's relevant to me? >> but to that point, i think one of the dangers is -- i used to work at c-span years ago, and i remember brian lamb every day spnds his day going through all the newspapers, and being mr. digital, brian why, are you wasting your time? what do you mean?

well, you can spend autopsy letters for all the things thaw care about, and he looked at and he goes, what about the things i didn't know i cared about? and i thought that was really -- that was a moment where i said, that's interesting. so i think what you do, in some ways, you narrow focus things that you know you're interested in, but you kind of -- the act of discovery is almost removed just by flepping through the web, just by flepping through news sites or blogs, you learn something you did not know, oh, that's of interest to me. and that's the power of the internet. it's taken some of the -- it's compiled all that information, put into digital format, so it's easily findable. i don't want to spend all day searching, i want to find what i'm looking for. but i also learn new things at the same time. >> tobin, some people predict that by 2020, the only way -- or the main way that we're going to be accessing the internet is through our cell phone. so i guess in the short term,

how do you think that the mobile technologies are going to be used in 2010? >> that's a great question. you know, it's hard to predict simply because it is always changing. with the obama campaign, we did a lot of sort of organizing with mobile, with events and that kind of thing. then as you mentioned earlier with haiti, up see a much better example of donating. $5 million raised by red cross was done in $10 increments. that's 500,000 people donating through their cell phone. you're having all these different factors come together, theels new ways of doing things, at the same time that cell phone technology is dramatically expanding. google is launching its phone. they already launched the android operating system. and it's allowed people to,

again, get more personalized information. and i think what campaigns are going to need to do is realize that it's not the same as something like an email list. it's not simply a list of names and addresses that you blast information out to. instead, there can be a much richer interaction with people based on where they are and what they're doing. so if people are at a school and they sign up, we should track that so that we can then give them information relevant to the school. and i think campaigns in general will need to find ways to better utilize that. one noncampaign example is something that was just recently launched that allowed to you track what congress it is doing on your phone. it's an iphone app, and it's really interesting, because for people interested in that issue, they might be walking around in the halls of congress or in the halls of the capitol, rather, and want to know, oh, woup, this bill was introduced even though i'm out of the office, and they're able to get all that information on the

phone. so while these cell phone carriers and makers of the phones, like apple, google, etc., they recognize this potential and are doing what they can to open it up so that you can have 65,000 applications. and so i just think that there's really a lot of potential out there, and the key is that the campaigns need to make sure that they keep tying it back to the person and making it as relevant to them as i can. >> i think if you're getting update on your phone every time a bill is introduced in congress, you got to also look at some of those online dating sites you're talking about, because it's pretty boring live. >> well, i will say that one of the things that the obama campaign did with the mobile, chicago found really impressive was some of the studies after the fact showed that it urged on election day, it urged folks to vote. they were tracking the weather patterns across the country. and so if you lived in a city where it was rainy, you might be less likely to go out, and you were in their database. you would get up to five texts

a day saying, did you go vote yet? please go vote. and plus they have click to call, where you can also add your contacts and say, hey, did you vote yet? that sort of turnout functionality, and they show that among younger audiences, that the voting turnout was actually increased because of that mobile technology. having said that, i think there's a lot of discussion about how much mobile and the internet really affected the race in 2008, but really, i think the ground game and the messaging and the campaigning hall a lot to do with it too. ron paul did a lot online, but because of the nature of the candidate and some of the issues, he wasn't able to garner the national attention or the support he needed to obtain the nod. but if you look at the way that folks are connecting in that way via mobile, it's certainly changing. we're going see the functionality changing, and it was content created for mobile online.

right now it's content that's on a screen. but right now, it's pretty expensive to do some of that mobile technology. but a lot of folks are doing it and doing it well. >> so the last question, before we take questions from the audience, and people can start lining up while we do this last question, something that's really interesting to me that i was reading yesterday was about the kay bailey hutchinson campaign, and how during the campaign at some point, google found out that there were hidden search terms in the html code of the web sivement of course, after, that it was a he said-she said between the campaign and election mall about how this had happened and there was a nondisclosure agreements, and they never really found out who did it, but the website was blacklisted on google's search. so i'm just kind of wondering, you know, who sets the ethical standards? i mean, that's just about search engine optimization, but

this is a big question, but who is setting theth sexicts standards and the best interested of how campaigns reach potential voters? i mean, anyone wants to -- >> i mean, ink large part, i'm just briefly say, because you've got more experience with it, in large part, i think it's policed by the users out there who feel that's a drty trick, you know, don't pollute our online environment with this or that. that might want be good enough. sometimes you might need to be a bit more, but i think in large part, what you were saying before about how people onlean are smart, they're not just sitting there in their pajamas saying this or that, they know when somebody is manipulating the web in a way that's underhand, and i think that's very risky for candidates that's going to blow up in their face, and i think that can police it in and of itself. >> so an example is the google bomb. i don't know if you're familiar with the google bomb.

basically theory is google returned search results based on what's most relevant. so if you get people to link to something and you get them to do on that their blogs, then google will think it must be relevant so. if you would google at the time miserable failure, it would direct to you whitehouse.gov. >> this is the bush administration? >> correct. people are manipulating this. this all started because a guy had a friend who was applying for a job, and he thought it would funny, that if you link the work talentless hack to his resume and he got his friends to do it, when you google talentless hack, this guy's resume would come up. obviously the campaign said this is a great thing, so let's start doing this. what was interesting is whitehouse.gov, president bush's biocame up, and then john kir's campaign came up, and then carry the's biopopped up there as well. so event we'll google disabled

it. and they said, listen, people are manipulating the system, this is not what it's intended for. there's certainly tricks like. that flike you understand how google works, how the web works, if you figure out how it works, you can manipulate it in such a way that could cause a little bit of damage. what's interesting about that, if you google some of those things today, in theory, whitehouse.gov would still come up. but if they move those pages around or a new white house comes to town, all the links get reset, so that sets google back, like, wait a minute, things lived in a certain place, but now they're no longer there, so that has long-term effects as well. >> i think the internet is like the force, you know? you can use the force for good, you can use the force for evil, you can train yourself in practices of the light side of the force or the dark side of the force. but if you spend too much time as a campaign or a company or individual on the dark side of the force, eventually they're

going to start throwing stuff at you. luke skywalker is going to come after you with a light sabre. it's a very individual thing, where guardians and protectors of the internet. so what do you and say and how you act online is very important. all a one last thing to add there, what we see with these, we're talking about when did we will become destructive, the person on google wants to get what's interesting to them. when that doesn't happen, they're like, oh, what's the deal with that, and they blame geeling or whatever website they're searching on. this us and, as a result, these companies are very protective of that, making sure whatever they're using works the way it's supposed to. i think what we often see is the companies themselves policing it. not because this is necessarily just their good nature and they're trying to be helpful, because they realize if we don't, they're going to stop using us, and that's how they

make money. taking good nell china, they just announced the other day that they're threatening to pull out of china completely. they don't to want run a search engine in china, but because a month ago, the chinese military and government hacked into a variety of google accounts of democratic activists, and google was like, this is unacceptable, we're already running a censored search engine, we're out, we're done. what's most interesting to me is here you have a superpower, basically, a huge country actually working directly with a company. this sent, you know, through the u.s. government or anything like that. and so china didn't just come out and say, whatever, you guys can leave. they didn't have a response for a day, and then they were like, well, anyone who wants to work here has to abide by our rules. and it really didn't come back. and so you say this company acting on behalf of its users to protect them and to obtain

that. and i think that will be the way going forth where it's not a perfect system, but whenever something does become disruptive or destructive or manipulates their users in a way that they don't want to get information or interact with the web sirktse you'll see those companies forced to step in and act, or they're going to lose the people. >> there's an article this morning about this story and, of course, the state department was quoted in the story. now, you know your site has, you know, has some weight if google says we're not going to be in china anymore and the state department has to weigh in. >> all right, so now we're going to our first audience question. let's try to keep them as crisp and concise as possible so we can get everyone asked. >> good morning. i attend the honors college. my first question -- well, only one question, but it's for mr. van ostern, and if possible, a follow-up from mr. en had are you. why do you think that during the 2008 presidential campaign

obama had such a large number of young supporters, and do you feel that that number has changed after obama has been in office for a year and why? >> sure. big question, but i'll break it down into a couple of parts. i think there are basically two big reasons why obama had such support among young people. the first is largely because of my perspective inside the campaign, and that is that young people were valued. they weren't some extra sort of, ok, let's win this campaign, and it would be great if young people support us. there was a national youth vote department, which i was part of, and whenever there was a campaign staff, there was always people associated with specifically reaching out to young people. and if you think about it, that already exists with most other groups. you know, you have like a veterans outreach staffer on the presidential campaign. you have it for different constituent success.

but often young people were left behind in that. what gets us all engaged were the same, in that if you reach out to us, we're going to respond. so having people focused to reaching out is crucial. and i think that the obama campaign recognized that and realized, you know, hey, if this person is 17 and they want to help out, they can say, hey, make phone calls, or let's make sure that if you want to volunteer on your campus, you can. so there was just a higher degree of investment in younger voters than we've seen in a while. the other side that have is a lot of what obama talked become and who it represented was appealing to young people. so, you know, these relatively young, president obama, he talked about issues relevant to younger people. when he was a senator, the

first bill he proposed was increasing financial aid for students. just a few years before he was paying off student loans. so it's easy for him to relate to people. the other flip side of that is he's charismatic, so he was able to get young people out there interested. but simple holding a rally and getting people there wasn't going to turn out the vote. it relied on that first step, which was make shuring there are the staff resources behind the matter to engage those people and make sure they were able to vote, make sure they were able to come out and vote. i think it needs to be said that john mccain, having followed his campaign very closely, valued young people, valued their vote swrblings was reaching out for their vote, but i think the obama campaign was probably better at reaching out to them. up just the kind of change that candidate obama was talking about appeals to young people, more radical, more, you know, we're really going to shake up washington, and mccain said he was going to as well, but when you look at the specific bullet

points of the obama administration, they were speaking the same language as a lot of young people. second, they were using the tools as you were laying out. you know, whether it's facebook, twitter, snerp using those tools to better contact with them. i will note that john mccain now has one of the best or most followed twitter accounts in the world. at least on capitol hill. now, why he wasn't doing that as a presidential candidate, i don't understand. nevertheless, it also needs to be said that i'm not saying if john mccain was using twitter last year or a year and a half ago he would be president now. that would be absurd. i don't think the social media in and of themselves are going to get you elected president, but i think when you put the whole package together, because by the way, i think david was making this point before about traditional media, traditional ground game in the campaign, i think you'll both agree that

you can't just focus on social media just because that's the wave of the future at the expense of making those phone calls, going door-to-door, and i think the obama campaign sort of had the whole package. they were still knocking on doors and using facebook, and just real quick on why they may be -- and i stress may be losing some young people is the first part of what's. i talked about the tools, first of all, the agenda on some of those agenda points there. may somebody young people who might feel dishe will lutioned that some of the promises that were made, some of the talk of radical change hasn't been delivered. if he delivers on a healthcare bill, some of those minds may be changed. it's still very early in his administration. >> thank you. >> i'm just going to add really quickly, one thing i should have mentioned is what was happening independent of the obama campaign. you saw an increasing number of young people voting each time, and so i think regardless of who was running, that trend would have tfpbled he just did a good job of capitalizing on

that trend. >> my name is richard. i'm from southern mass. and my question is regarding -- i mean, is for mr. al massey, and it's regarding the text message that is people are receiving from endorsements of the candidates. democratic leaders have been, you know, texting people to go vote for the democratic candidate, martha coakley, yet scott brown, the republican candidate, continues to rise in the polls. do you think that the text message endorsements actually have a big effect or are they just preaching to the choir? >> it's a great question. i think a lot remains to be seen. again, ed just made the point, it's not just what you're doing online, it's what you're doing off-line that also counts.

there's been interesting news stories about massachusetts, so even the fact that the republicans see a little bit of light of day there, that we could actually take ted kennedy's senate seat, there's a lot of excitement around that, and i think other folks in the state who might lean a little bit to the right are getting energized about that. other people in the country are getting energized about that. so i'm sure that more money is flowing into that. and so, you know, in some ways, text message social security just a way to keep in touch with your folks up there and your supporters. but, you know, to ed's point about the ground game, you know, during the obama campaign, i live in a part of northern virginia that's mostly retired military, and i couldn't go to an event, whether it was a book festival or farmer's market or even to the market to buy food, and there won't be an obama table with volunteers out there signing people to register to vote. and handing out buttons and stickers, so i think it's a combination of all of the above just because you're doing things, whether it's mobile, on the web, or otherwise is not a replacement for some of the

traditional ground game tactics. all sexaw this strikes me as using a technology in a very old-school way. this kind of endorsement thing has been done with direct mail for the past 20 or 30 years. and then it was done by email for the past eight years. and now they're moving to text message. so it's a very old-school tactic being applied to a new school technology, and i'm not quite sure how effective that is. i think we view it as noise. i think we chuck it in the garbage, we delete it, and we don't put that much weight in it. if that text message actually came from somebody you knew saying, oh, dude, important election, go out and vote, we need you, i think that you would hold on to that and it might influence you even more. >> but the one difference with texting, there's spamming regulations, and so an email, you get spam all the time, if you get a text and you opt out of that text, you still keep getting text messages, the fines for that are through the roof. and because most people value

their cell phone, it's within 10 feet of them 90% of the time, it's a way to directly reach people when there's an urgent need, whether it's get out and vote or get your friends to vote or what have you, or we need $10 right now, can you do this? it's a qualified direction to reach people independently. most people read text messages within messages after reading they want i have several emails flained my g-mail account right now. >> thank you very much. >> good morning. with some of the recent advance such as tivo, this is basically the television based, do you think that viral ads will become the new status quo in politics? >> i think they're fun and interesting, but i think those viral ads still depend upon the mainstream media to pick them up and give them more play. last week, a member of the mainstream/new media said that

he was no longer going to cover viral ads if there wasn't a television ad behind them, as if saying these viral ads really aren't serious unless the organizations putting them out are willing to put a quarter of a million or a million dollars behind them in paid television advertising. so i think that as interesting as they are -- and i love them -- i think that they depend upon the mainstream media a lot to get even more play, to actually go as viral as they can go and as their creators want them to go. >> although mark was getting emails after the fact and ended up doing a follow-up post, people are like, well, isn't that bilesd toward television only? what if something does aed toods online ad and he said, yeah, i'll put that up. so we're still -- tv is definitely come dominating what's going on, but i think that there is a little bit of

interest in, ok, what about putting the tv ad before you watch that free video online? it's only 15 seconds long or 30 seconds long, but if you watch it, you get free content. if neglect, people are more likely to watch those. they're not going to tivo it or walk out of the room during the commercial break. and so it's still, you know, it's a tiny percentage of what's happening, but i think at the very least that percentage will increase. >> i also think a viral ad can get attention, but getting back to our broader point about still being old school as well, you've got just this really cool viral ad, it catches people's attention, and then did you to debate, they're kind an idiot and you don't know the issues, and you misspeak on terrorism or healthcare or whatever. chances are that viral ad is not going to carry to you election, it's going to be a part of it, but you need to also have some other important aatrebts. >> one more quick question. >> my name is alessandro, and i come from washington jefferson college in washington, p.a.

there's been discussion or worry concerning the overexposure or under exposure of the president due to this new media. do you feel that this is a good or bad change? do you think that the president should be this exposed and this out there in the media and in the public, or do you feel that people are overreacting? >> i think the media likes to make a story about how overexposed barack obama is. i'm not sure that regular people really care that much about it. >> well, as a member of the media, i got to say, i mean, i can see both sides of this. but on your one main point that is the media driving, it i talk to a lot of real people back home or not just in the beltway who are saying every time i turn on tv, he's on the cooking channel, then he's on espn, talked about baseball and whatever, and that's fine. on the other side of it, i will

say i think there was a lot of pundits overdoing that he was overexposed, because frankly, it's a free country. and if he wants to use these new media, he has that ability to do it. it was effective for him in the campaign. but i think there are diminishing returns from that, and i think we saw in the healthcare battle earlier, he was on a lot and he wasn't really moving a needle, it wasn't moving it forward. he kind of pulled back for a while and was not out there every single day, and now it looks like he's on the verge potentially of a victory. so i think he's free to do what he wants, and i think they're still seeing in the white house that sometimes flooding it and going out there everywhere can move the ball forward for them. other times they've got to pull back. the whoups has sort of turned this around on the media, the president hasn't had a full-fledged news conference since i think july or june. >> six months. >> and he's been getting some pressure on that. and so robert gibbs a couple of

times this week said, well, all you guys said we're overexposed, we're trying to pull back. of course, we want a news conference. obviously thearls a sexush a pull. more important, i think there's a balance for any white house. like i said, i don't think we should just knee-jerk say he's overexposed. if he thinks that's what he needs to do to get his message out, whether afghanistan, healthcare, the economy, he's free to do that. but i think the white house also has learned over the last year that there are diminishing returns sometimes, and there's a balance to it. you can't be out there in everybody's face every single day. >> and not have action to back it up. >> right. getting back to the broader point, yeah. you can just keep talking about healthcare, but if there's not a movement on it, if your democratic colleagues on the hill are not moving the ball forward, they missed deadline after deadline throughout the last six moss, but now they're starting to meet those deadlines. there are two bills that they're trying to merge. there's something right. there's some substance behind it. earlier there was a lot of talk, lot of talk, democrats on the hill were struggling to get

it it moving. now that there's something that they can rally behind, him getting out there and messaging it might be more effective. >> just to finish up, we're going to do just an opinion from each of the panelists, i think it's really interesting that if this was january 15, 2000, that a.o.l. and time warner would have just merged. i was reading a lot about this in the "new york times" yesterday. $350 billion is what it's estimated that merger was worth, and people said that it was going to change the landscape of the internet, it was going to change the way that news was reported in i'm of this. and if anyone would have said, you know, 10 years ago that it would be just a flop, no one would have believed it. so my question for each panelist is, what do we believe today that in two years or five years or 10 years people are just going to say i can't believe we believed that?

>> about technology? >> yeah. >> now you want us to go back while c-span is here. >> well, i don't know. we have to look at how quickly technology is advancing, too. the things that took two years to create a year ago will take half the time today. i mean, it's moving, but murphy's law says that technology is advancing so rapidly, and so this concept of convergence, this concept of everything will be touch sexreen you tpwhalk your house, and there will be no more televisions, no more exoorts, everything will be touch screen. we're seeing some of that already. microsoft came out with a table a couple of years ago. skype has become the jetsons, talk online. but still, it's a little bit funky. i don't know if it's going to be 10 years from now, but it will be sfwog see. i remember this concept of convergence was pitched, you know, years ago. leo helped are you at the time with t.c.i. cable was asked

about, you know, pulling on to the information superhighway, and his response was i feel like we're still sitting in the driveway. that was about 120 seo years ago as well. -- that was about 10 years ago as well. so i think we won't be as far along as we think we will be. >> one prediction would be that the idea of a 2020 most of our web use lob cell phones i don't believe. i still think that people value having a little more space, all kinds of different work products that we do and whatnot. undoublet, like on the fly, it's great to check a baseball score or other things, but i still think there's a value in having more than just a little screen. >> it's interesting that our television screens get bigger and our cell phone screens get smaller, because we're still going to want that, yeah. >> yeah, seems like a dangerous thing. i'll give one or two examples of things that i think could go either way. i think that with the examples you give, and another great

example might be myspace, which valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. >> what's myspace? >> exactly, just a couple of years ago, losing people dramatically. i think the key is they need to adapt to the new technology and adapt to things that are changing. and i think that the companies think that the way to do that is by giving people the platform to create their own content and their own unique ways of using something. so with the iphone, the iphone would become obsolete or at least become identical to every other phone if they did not have applications. nowadays, that he wants the number one reason why people are picking iphones regardless of carriers and such, because it just has a bigger application data base. and so these companies need to make sure that they allow people to interact with their content and their products in unique ways. at the same time, they also all face the problem of monetizing. and so i think that facebook will be really interesting example of this, where they

have a huge user base, they're dramatically growing, they have a lot of potential, but at the same time they need to make money through ads, and they're trying to get people to share more and more information. and with myspace, what ultimately happened was you didn't know who those people were. none of it was verifiable. you did not fn that person was 99 years old like they said at the time or if they were 1, whatever funny age they put in between, all that information was just subjective w. facebook, in the beginning, it was linked so closely to colleges that people put their real information, today verify they were a college student first to be a part that have network, and then people friend them. they say, yes, i know this person, and if that person had a random photo and a weird nickname or something like that, them weren't going to friend them because they didn't trust them. now the founder of facebook said just the other day that he thinks people are valuing privacy a lot less than they did before, and that's why facebook is basically sharing more and more of your information. you see that with the news feed now a lot of things you can't hide automatically. they're ought mackly shared

with your friends, like when you write on someone's wall. i'm not going protect facebook won't be near 10 years, but i think they need to be really careful of the path they follow with this or they do at least risk going the way of myspace. my very last point is, the other thing with all these examples is something new came along to take their space. facebook came and took their space. they capitalized on their weaknesses, so it's really the new products kind of pushing out the old ones. and so without, you know, i think we'll be more interesting to see what comes up and what is created, and i think that will actually have the biggest impact on what exists now. >> we'll have to leave it at that. thank you to the graduate school of management here at g.w., and seriously, thank you to the panelists for coming. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010]

>> today on "washington journal" -- a discussion about president obama's proposed fees on banks that received tarp money with steve bartlett, financial services roundtable president and c.e.o. also, a look at how al qaeda recruits young people with colonel j.m. venhaus of the united states institute of peace. after that, a discussion on a dispute between google and china after google announced they were being hit by cyberattacks that originated in china. "washington journal" live at 7:00 a.m. eastern here on c-span. >> today, new virginia governor bob mcdonnell's state of the commonwealth speech. watch it live starting at 7:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span.

>> this week -- our guest is fred grandy, former republican congressman from iowa. he's currently the host of a radio talk show called "the grandy & andy morning show" on wmal in washington, d.c. and it's on the website at wmal.com. >> fred grandy, he want to you grade the following four things in your life from the purpose -- for the purpose of what gave you the most satisfaction. >> are we talking about four grades or an aggregate grade? >> all right, let's start. actor, gopher on "love boat," how satisfying was that? >> oh, satisfaction index, solid b. >> member of the united states congress for four years. >> b minus. >> head of goodwill industries

for five years. >> a minus. >> talk show host, washington, d.c., wmal today. >> b plus. >> we're cool back to all of that. >> all right. >> let's look at what it's like to be in your studio when you start off in the morning. >> wmal washington, 107.3, 6630 wmal.com. lisp all day and be stimulated. >> yeah! >> now grandy and andy on the news. >> you've been doing this for how long? >> let's see, i started at wmal in 2003, so this is really my seventh year, and i have saddam hussein to thank for the job. >> why? >> well, because i had