White House’s ‘We the People’ petition website: Your message here?

posted at 1:22 pm on October 31, 2011 by Howard Portnoy
[ Obama ]   

It is no secret that Barack Obama loves social media. Sites like Facebook and Twitter helped him get elected in 2008.

So much a product is the president of present-day Internet technology that in his three years in office he has launched more White House website pages than you shake a cursor at. Some, like the now-defunct AttackWatch.com, which called upon the snitches among us to rat out Obama’s critics, sent a pernicious and troubling message.

Others have backfired for equally cynical if less obvious reasons. In this second category is We the People: Your Voice in Our Government. Launched in late September, the site gives concerned and politically active Americans an easy way to

petition the Obama Administration to take action on a range of important issues facing our country. If a petition gets enough support, White House staff will review it, ensure it’s sent to the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response.

For those too dumb to follow the three-step process outlined on this page, there is a helpful video that users can watch.

Mediaite’s Josh Feldman reports on the success (if that is the correct term) of the project so far. He notes that this week the White House delivered its first responses to petitions that reached the 25,000-signature benchmark (the number needed to guarantee a response).

One blanket response was to eight separate petitions, all demanding that the administration decriminalize the use of marijuana. Its author was Obama “drug czar” Gil Kerlikowske, who wrote:

Like many, we are interested in the potential marijuana may have in providing relief to individuals diagnosed with certain serious illnesses. That is why we ardently support ongoing research into determining what components of the marijuana plant can be used as medicine. To date, however, neither the FDA nor the Institute of Medicine have found smoked marijuana to meet the modern standard for safe or effective medicine for any condition.

As a former police chief, I recognize we are not going to arrest our way out of the problem. We also recognize that legalizing marijuana would not provide the answer to any of the health, social, youth education, criminal justice, and community quality of life challenges associated with drug use.

That is why the President’s National Drug Control Strategy is balanced and comprehensive, emphasizing prevention and treatment while at the same time supporting innovative law enforcement efforts that protect public safety and disrupt the supply of drugs entering our communities.

The response had the effect of generating seven new petitions. One calls upon the White House to “respond to each of the 7 marijuana related petitions individually instead of one canned response,” while another urges the administration to “take these petitions seriously instead of just using them as an excuse to pretend you are listening.” That one has received more than 7,600 signatures so far. (Two of the seven new petitions ask that Gil Kerlikowske be replaced, but every crowd has its jokers.)

If there is a lesson for the White House in this misadventure it is that reaching out to the electorate requires physically going out among the voters—and not just the ones who are your friends. And if there is a lesson for voters, it is that sometimes words are just words, even when they are wrapped in silver-tongued oratory.

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