Today wasn’t the first time Barack Obama asked his supporters to “get in the face” of people who disagree with Sen. Obama. In fact, yesterday’s Chicago Tribune carried an illuminating story on the “Obama Action Wire”–Obama’s flash-mob tool designed to disrupt media criticism of the candidate in real time. (h/t Steve Sailer) Here’s how the Obama Action Wire Works: The campaign has a large database of supporters. When the campaign gets wind of something in the media it doesn’t like, for instance, a radio interview with an Obama critic or a TV ad being run critical of Obama, the Action Wire directs people in the database to flood the offending media outlet with phone calls and emails. Many times, this is done while the interview is being conducted on air.
The effect of the Action Wire seems to be to create something like a Denial of Service Attack. Now, DoS attacks aren’t illegal (at least not in the United States; they are in the U.K.). But surely it says something about the Obama campaign’s commitment to free and fair exchange of ideas that his campaign actively prods people into disrupting the airing of views it finds displeasing. It wasn’t always that way. During the primaries, part of Obama’s stump speech was about the need to listen to your political opponents and to interact with them politely. Obama didn’t mean for this dialogue to result in the compromise of liberal ideals, of course. He explicitly meant that in order to achieve liberal political ends it would be necessary to appear collegial and open-minded in order to persuade independents to join the movement. Here’s how he put it in New Hampshire:
As the Action Wire show’s Obama is still all for pushing people aside. But he no longer sees the necessity for politeness. Exit Question: I suppose it’s one thing for a candidate to issue orders for what amounts to a DoS attack on media he dislikes. But would President Obama keep the Action Wire up and running?
