Well, he didn’t waste much time. President-elect Barack Obama already has his new website up and running: Change.gov. And guess what? You can apply for a job at the White House there.
No doubt Obama utilized the Web better than any candidate before him. He raised a ton—stacks and stacks—of money online, $5 and $10 at a time, hired an SEM expert before it was even certain he’d win the primary, and took his message to YouTube.
Enter Change.gov, subheaded: Office of the President-Elect. Apparently a virtual office. Like many a company or organization website, it’s easily navigable via tabs at the top leading to a Newsroom and an About page. But it has some surprising—and somewhat revolutionary sections as well.
It’s not the blog section, or the biography sections for Obama and Joe Biden. The revolutionary parts are the participatory crowd-sourcing sections. Have a vision for America? You can pound out your version of “Common Sense” and upload it to the site. Have a story you want told? Under the same “American Moment” tab, you can upload that too.
Obama has a link to his agenda, delineating specifically what he plans to do about the economy, the war, health care, homeland security, and global leadership. The site provides an overview of the Presidential Transition and which cabinet positions need to be filled.
Another curious tab, labeled “America Serves,” a number of new corps are mentioned:
The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start.
And then, perhaps the most unexpected section of the website, you can apply to work for the President. It doesn’t list which jobs there are openings for. One supposes it’s up the applicant to have something in mind.
No matter what your politics, you gotta admit that’s a new and transformational approach to the highest office in the land.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5Xx9Q0JtQQ
