Political Twitter

"However current it may be technologically, Twitter seems somehow out of step in its political sensibility," writes Matt Bai in the New York Times (4/26/09). Matt is referring, in part, to Twitter’s "false intimacy between politicians and voters." As he sees it, the idea that the president should be a good drinking buddy is obsolete "in this new age of reckoning." Today, what we want is for "politicians to stop sharing and govern like adults." (And maybe listen more than talk: Missouri Senator @clairecmc has 21,968 followers but follows just one person – her communications director).

Matt thinks Twitter’s "brevity and immediacy" are a bad fit with a political climate that "is already too simplistic and binary, its news cycle more comically truncated and ephemeral than at any time in our history … we seem to react to everything with a kind of frantic, predictable impulse … rather than with a longer-term consideration of benefits and consequences. The last thing Washington needs right now is politicians who seek to convey the moment in even shorter slogans …"

Matt carefully notes that Twitter does have redeeming value, "But not every new mode of communication lends itself to politics, where speed and complexity rarely coexist," he writes. Besides, do you really need to know when your Senator stops at Starbucks? Matt suggests it might be for the best if the capital "became a Twitter-free zone, a city where people spent more time talking to the guy serving the coffee and less time informing the world that the coffee had been served." (BTW, you can find me on Twitter @timmanners).