McCaskill Gets It: Authenticity Matters
Senator Claire McCaskill's Twitter account is making waves right now -- and for good reason.
First and foremost, it's clearly written by Senator McCaskill herself.
Consider this tweet:
Brought work home. My sister is here who is a huge dog person. That means one thing tonight. Westminister Dog Show on TV.
Or this one:
Now the fun part of Sundays, digging into the newspapers. I love the Sunday papers. Hot tea and a big pile of papers. Perfect.
An aide couldn't impersonate this kind of content (unless that aide is spending way too much time with the Senator). It's personal in an authentic way -- we get to know something about a family member's TV tastes, McCaskill's Sunday morning routine, even her culinary preferences.
It goes deeper than the boilerplate "personal" stuff that we usually hear from our politicians: "When I'm not in DC, I enjoy spending as much time as possible with my wife and children back in my district," etc.
But McCaskill doesn't just invite us into her home; she also gives us insider access to the Hill.
She lets us glimpse into to often-messy process of legislative compromise:
Its harder than it looks to get the handful of R votes we MUST have AND keep the Ds happy.Back at it in am.
She makes sure to keep us updated on the bill's progress...
Proud we cut over 100 billion out of recov bill.Many Ds don't like it, but needed to be done.The silly stuff Rs keep talking about is OUT.
And she even gives us a sense of the often humorous moments in between getting a bill passed that define the personalities in the Senate:
Hysterical. Swarming Senators around candy drawer in back of Chamber.
McCaskill also uses Twitter to engage with and critique media figures, such as the New York Times' Paul Krugman:
Just saw Krugman's comments on reduction in recov act. Question for him. Would no stimulus act be better than one thats 800 B instead of 900
McCaskill understands that it's not enough to simply be present on a social media space like Twitter. Plenty of public figures have official blogs and Twitter accounts, but all too often, staffers simply use them to dump press releases and re-post media mentions. This is a recipe for being ignored and it's the opposite of what McCaskill is doing -- using Twitter as a tool communicate with constituents and supporters, rather than to them.
Authentic online communication isn't always neat and perfectly on-message, and it can occasionally lead to headaches for staffers (see Hoekstra, Pete). But the benefits -- namely, narrowing the huge disconnect between the public and our public officials-- outweigh the potential costs.
Most of us have no idea how a Senator spends his or her day, what it's like to work in a high-pressured place with some not-always-friendly colleagues, how the legislative process functions. McCaskill is lifting up the hood, inviting us to peer in; she's giving us an incentive to invest more time to understanding how Congress works, and why it matters in our everyday lives.
I'm hooked. And so, evidently, are the over 5,000 folks who have already signed up to follow her.
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