He was constrained by a number: 140, the maximum characters a Twitter message can contain. On a recent Wednesday afternoon, it was US President Barack Obama’s own, self-imposed limit. Obama was hosting a “Twitter Town Hall Meeting” in the East Room of the White House, where he hoped to explain his policies through the new medium.
It’s a challenge for a politician to restrict his comments to 140 characters, especially during a budget crisis in which anger and shouting seemed to prevail over actual arguments.
“I’m going to make history here as the first president to live tweet,” Obama said with an amused smile, as he walked up to a laptop adorned with the presidential seal. These were big words for a particularly insignificant event.
Obama has always managed to win over Americans with big words. He used big words to raise expectations and establish a mood of change in the 2008 presidential election campaign, when he inspired the country with his slogan “Yes, we can.”