(I don’t mean the current president specifically.) How might it change our perception of the President if he (or she, but I’ll use “he” for the remainder of the OP) maintained a daily blog recording his thoughts on the issues of the day, plus his more mundane thoughts and feelings? Assuming that he was reasonably articulate in expressing himself, would it help everyday people better identify with him? Nowadays, most people view the president as little more than (1) a personification of his policies, so that their opinions of him are basically identical to their opinions of his policies, and (2) a caricature (positive or negative) of his most prominent personality traits.
But if we got to read his own expressions of his own thoughts on a daily basis, we might be more inclined to think of him as just another human being. It might make him harder to demonize in the way that recent presidents have been demonized by their oppositions.
Of course, I’m assuming that care will be taken to make sure he doesn’t reveal anything that should remain classified. But he could still write about his personal views on topics we are all aware of.
Would getting to know our president so well hamper his ability to perform his job? Is it psychologically necessary that there be some sense of distance between the Leader and the Masses?
The blogs you’re looking for are called autobiographies. Once the Prez is out of office, he can review his time in office and let you know what he was thinking and feeling at any point he cares to go into. A sitting Prez doing this? I can’t imagine any world leader in any country that would do this.
It can be fun to debate what the “big picture” is concerning policy issues, but we’ll never know ourselves. Ever wonder why the higher-up officials in just about every country have to pass such strict security checks? The leaders are there to do thier best to make sure we don’t have a shitstorm rain down on us. (Saddam wasn’t so good at this)
Again, it would be fun to know what a Prez is thinking day by day. But frankly, it would be horrible in that too much info would be put out. I personally don’t like Clinton, but I can’t say he was the worst Prez we’ve had. I still wouldn’t want him to write a blog. Sometimes there were world issues he dealt with that none of us needed to know. And if we did (as with every Prez) it would in no way have helped the US.
(Now I have to take a shower. I actually somewhat defended Clinton) :smack:
This can go either way. The more the president says, the more there is to be misinterpreted. On the other hand, the more he says, the more opportunity he has to clarify his points.
But that is exactly what I’m asking readers of this thread to imagine. What would be the consequences of this? Would it change the way we relate to the president? Would the change be good or bad? I suggest that it would be good. Right now, most people support or oppose the president based on a very supperficial understanding of his character, positions, and values. But under the scenario I’m proposing, people could gain a much more intimate knowledge of the man, so they could hold correspondingly better informed opinions.
Why would it be horrible to have “too much info”? (As I already stated, these blogs would not include anything that should be classified). Setting aside information that could present a threat to national security, I think commitment to democracy means that there is no such thing as “too much info” when it comes to the voters making informed decisions.
The current President, George W. Bush, is only partially literate. He can make chimp-like sounds and faces, and can presumably scratch 3-letter words like “cat” on a small slate, but he cannot speak, read, or write standard, proper English.
Perhaps a future president will make blog dream a reality.
And you earned a degree from Harvard in what year? Partially literate, huh? Leave the jokes to the comedians. Your comments are woefully lacking in anything original.
The President [ul]
[li]doesn’t write his own speeches[/li][li]doesn’t write his own policy statements[/li][li]doesn’t permit outsiders into the “inner circle”[/li][li]doesn’t want his Hidden Agenda exposed[/li][li]and doesn’t really want anybody to know what goes on.[/li][/ul]
Neither this one, nor any other.
The blog would be written by a hired geek. You would be no more knowledgable than you are now.
Who knows what the actual view, policies, opinions & beliefs of our “leaders” are? :dubious: :mad:
And considering you hate GWB, Aeschines, why would you equate him to chimps? Do you hate chimps? What is your problem with primates? I understand they aren’t native to Japan (I’m really doing well not going for that joke. Considering what FDR approved for American thoughts of the Japanese during WWII) Oops, guess I alluded to it anyway.
So what is your problem with the lesser of humanoid families? You speciesist.
Didn’t he get out of Chomskys’ class at Harvard by signing up for cheerleading or something? Good grief what would he write?
‘Umm, uh, er, ah had a nap t’day’
(smirk)
They would fake the whole thing anyway, you don’t think they’d actually let him write his own weblog do you? We might as well just bow down to a big picture of Martin Sheen.
The “Bush is dum! / No he’s not!” hijack illuminates why it would be better if we had a genuine basis for our opinions on the personal qualities of the president. As things are now, most people base their conclusions (positive or negative) on preconceptions + sound bites or factoids taken out of context. If there were a large body of material in which the president had expressed his own views in his own words on a variety of subjects great and small, you’d have a much sounder foundation for your opinion of his intelligence.
Several people have suggested that the blog would inevitably be written by hired hands. Perhaps this objection could be met by having the blog be a video blog. If the entries are expected to appear unrehearsed it would make it difficult for them to be the product of speech writers. Most people who aren’t actors cannot make text written by someone else sound like extemporized speech. I would venture to guess that even actors would have a difficult time delivering a monologue that couldn’t be distinguished from their own natural speech by a frequency analysis of umm’s and false starts.
Of course, the general views he’s stating might still be the product of spinmeisters, but at least he’d have to articulate and defend them in his own words. I don’t know about you, but that would give me some confidence that the president is something other than an empty suit, which might give me more confidence in his leadership, even if I didn’t agree with all of his opinions. If more people have this confidence, it can only make the president better able to do his job.
It used to be ordinary practice for Presidents and other senior officials to keep diaries, mainly to keep their own thoughts straight and to refresh their own memories. Then, the Packwood case established that diaries could be subpoenaed, and the Clinton investigations showed that no topic is out of bounds. We no longer have diaries as a research resource even for historians.
A blog would be a horrible way to achieve that goal. People’s private thoughts – including those of highly intelligent people – often go through an iterative process of refinement and modification. Having the President record his own private musings in that manner is simply asking for trouble. That is why even the best Presidential speeches are subject to proofreading, editing and extensive review. You just know that there will be thousands of wonks out there who will nitpick each detail to death, often inserting interpretations that may or may not be warranted.
For this reason, a public blog would be a horribly inefficient use of the Chief Executive’s time. If he wants people to know what he’s thinking, there are better avenues for communicating this – press releases, press conferences and public speeches, for example. Having him jot down his own musings, for the explicit purpose of public scrutiny, is nothing but a disaster waiting to happen.
Mind you, I keep a blog myself; however, I don’t do it specifically so that other people can review my thoughts and interpret my every action. Blogging the President’s thoughts would amount to placing him under an even bigger microscope than the one he’s forced to endure, and no sane official would want that.
Anyone remember Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats? Essentially the same idea, and as I recall, they were quite successful. They helped the people to feel like they had a President who was on their level and wanted them to understand his thoughts and ideas about the issues at the time.
FDR is considered one of the best presidents our time and I think his ability to relate to the people on their level was one of the reasons for this.
I think a modern day blog would be a great idea, perhaps it would help me, and others like me, to understand what the hell is running through GWB’s mind. Perhaps, it would help me to have a little more simpathy for him if I could see where he was coming from.
I would also love to read a blog from some interesting presidents in the past as well. Can you imagine reading Nixon’s blog? Or Reagan? Could be interesting.
The beauty of a blog is that it’s not filtered and edited just to prevent all nitpicking. It’s real! Not fake and scripted! The Press Conferences of today are so bland that they serve the goal of not pissing people off at the expense of not really pleasing anybody either.
Maybe all hell will break loose if the President keeps a blog. But to quote G.W Bush : “Bring it on.”
:dubious: :mad:
