The Hindu Business Line : Obama communicates & connects on YouTube

Not only is he preparing to meet an economic crisis that’s turning out to be similar to the great Depression head-on but is using similar means to communicate with the American people that his illustrious predecessor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt made popular during the Great Depression and World War II.

But there’s a crucial difference.

The famous “fireside chats” that Roosevelt pioneered through the most innovative medium of the time — the radio as a way to communicate has been extended by Mr Barack Obama as a way to also connect through YouTube.

Now, just about everyone cannot only hear his plans for what is turning out to be one of the worst periods for Americans in seven years, but also interact through comments on his Web site www.change.gov and Youtube.

On Saturday, in the second of his weekly discussions, the President-elect gave some more indications of just how he intended to combat the crisis. Mr Obama said that an Economic Recovery Team was putting together a plan to create 2.5 million jobs by January 2011. That plan, he clarified, would be the first project he would sign once he assumed office on January 20, 2009.

To that end, Mr Obama said he would stress long-term investments to repair crumbling bridges and roads, modernise schools and reduce dependence on “foreign oil” through investments in wind farms, solar panels and alternate energies.

The message Mr Obama was sending came through clearly, “I have already started on the job and that is to put “public interests before special interests”.

Without sounding alarmist, he also made it clear that things would get worse before they got better which means that more Americans will lose jobs in the coming months even as his team is putting together a ‘New Deal’. And one place to gauge the mood of jobless and insecure Americans will surely be the comments below his videos on YouTube.