The Whitehouse.gov blog continues to improve, by which I mean it continues to move away from being a glass-topped version of White House press releases. But it's missing a big opportunity by keeping its blog posts anonymous.

(Crossposted from Joho the Blog)

Nicholas Lemann has a terrific piece in the Jan. 26 New Yorker that says that personal characteristics are not enough to make someone a great president. To achieve that status, Obama “has to create institutions that will outlast him.” His examples are the United Nations, NATO, and social “legislation and regulation that affect very large numers of people and are built to last politically and economically…”

One could certainly point to health care as possibly being of that status, especially if Daschle steps up the game so that it’s more than reform ‘n’ extend. It’s also possible that building a new world role for America could put Obama in the Hall of Great Presidents even if no official institutions come out of it. Likewise if his action on global warming and all around greenness changes not just our policies but our assumptions. But let me suggest another place Obama could do something monumental. Yes, the Internet. And, yes, I do understand that this is not as important as world hunger and poverty. Nevertheless…

Last night, I went to the JFK Library to see a panel on the Internet and the campaign, with Matt Bai of The New York Times, Garrett Graff of Washingtonian Magazine (and Howard Dean’s first political webmaster), and Joe Trippi, who ran Dean’s campaign.

It was an interesting session not just because of the caliber of the people, but because the sight it gave of what’s been settled and what we’re still arguing about. These three astute observers — two of them straight-ahead Obama supporters, and one maintaining professional neutrality, but, c’mon, you think Bai’s going to vote for McCain?? — agree that the Internet is transformative of politics and ultimately of democracy. It’s worth pausing to remember that four years ago, we were still arguing about that. They also agree that this is overall for the good, albeit with various important doubts and reservations.

Much as I love Wikipedia — and I love it so much that I'm giving it candy hearts on Valentine's Day — its policy of neutrality sometimes forces resolution when we'd rather have debate. Yes, competing sides get represented in the articles, and the discussion pages let us hear people arguing their points, but the arguments themselves are treated as stations on the way to neutral agreement.

So, there's room for additional approaches that take the arguments themselves as their topics. That's what Debatepedia.org does, and it looks like it's on its way to being really useful.

The Chris Lydon radio show, Open Source, did a show on hyper-localism that featured Ed Remsen, mayor of Montclaire NJ, who isn't above commenting on posts on to Baristaville. As Brendan Greeley, of Radio Open Source, points out, Remsen isn't a born-on-the-Net hip guy. But he sure seems to get that the Net is an unowned conversation, and that his constituents are talking.

Jock Gill over at GreaterDemocracy urges his fellow liberals to drop-the-hub and spoke model and to go Gnostic, getting rid of the intermediaries.

It is a partisan piece, of course, and raises the question of whether any particular party's politics makes it better suited to adopting the new tools of directed, connected democracy.

HumanRightsFirst.org is live-blogging the Gonzales hearing. (They also have links to the Real Player feed from C-SPAN.)

The Republicans are continuing to use the Net to encourage local political action. At the Republican Party site you can sign up to host an inauguration party. So far, 31,457 people have done so. I wouldn't be shocked if, in addition to Pin the Tail Real Hard on the Donkey, fund raising were a suggested party activity.

You can also buy your branded Republican goods on the site: $2.95 for a Bush-Cheney "yard sign system" (it's a system because it comes with little wire posts) and items such as a GWB medallion or a Ronald Reagan t-shirt.

This Flash documentary by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson on the future of media describes a possible path from here to 2014 for Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and the NY Times. I think it eventually goes off the rails, but it's well done and, IMO, worth the 11 minutes.

Here's a first person account of Black Box Voting serving Teresa Lapore with papers for failing to comply with a public records request. Snippet:

"This is what democracy looks like," she said, as the officials
scowled and shouted for the sergeant at arms.