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With “micro-blogging” being all the rage right now, many politicians have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon as a way to get their names/opinions out into the collective, although many of them say it’s to open a window into our government. Now, I’m not talking about Barack Obama, John McCain or Bob Barr (although they are all politicians who are on twitter) who use twitter as a broadcast tool, I’m talking about folks like Texas Rep. John Culberson who are “twittering” from the House floor, as far as we know.

Congressional Twittering

Many people in the social media space have applauded his use of twitter to communicate with people, others (including some other members of congress) have been less than ecstatic about it. The question I have is this: What good does reading a 140 character twitter post from a politician on the floor of the house or senate do?

These are the last five posts on Rep. Culberson’s twitter stream (all which apparently occurred sometime around 1:00 am EDT on July 25th, 2008:

johnculberson @gnoll110 Only recently he began to try to use savings to reduce deficit - cutting deficit/balancing budget must be Congress’ highest priority about 12 hours ago from web in reply to gnoll110

johnculberson @gnoll110 Virtually none of Flake’s amendments save a dime bcz he did not deposit savings into deficit reduction - $$ autospent elsewhere about 12 hours ago from web in reply to gnoll110

johnculberson @gnoll110 Amendmentto cut earmark doesnt save a dime unless amend. specifies cut go to deficit reduction - otherwise $ autorespent elsewhere about 12 hours ago from web in reply to gnoll110

johnculberson Good night all! Tomorrow a quieter day I can answer DMs & catch up - Congress out till Tuesday - Cong Hoekstra about to launch on Twitter about 12 hours ago from web

johnculberson @jimogle TY! will do - leadership will never take these tools away from me & might as well regulate the wind as regulate the Internet! about 12 hours ago from web in reply to jimogle

Well, to begin with, I doubt he was on the floor of the house at 1:00 AM. Second, does any of this make sense? He’s having disjointed conversations with people who may or may not be his constituents about issues that they may or may not truly understand. Add to that that he is apparently bashing another representative (Flake) in a public forum where that representative isn’t represented.

I want to focus in a little on the oldest of the posts, where Rep. Culberson says that “leadership will never take these tools away from me & might as well regulate the wind as regulate the internet!”

Okay, now this extends into a discussion over House ethics and franking rules that I don’t want to get into, so I’ll sum it up: a fellow Congressman raised some questions about the rules against posting official messages on non-governmental sites (the questions were in regards to videos he had seen on YouTube). Rep. Culberson jumped on this and turned it into a direct attack on his use of twitter, oh, and that fellow Congressman happened to be a Democrat.

Now, I find it interesting that Rep. Culberson (who voted yes on FISA, yes to the Patriot & Protect America Acts, no on preventing illegal wiretapping & prosecuting hate crimes and yes on religious discrimination in Government funded Head Start programs) is all up in arms about having his freedom to twitter taken away by “the leadership”. This man who is fully in favor of allowing the government to tap our phones without a warrant and allow government funded discrimination is pissed about Twitter?

Twitter is many things to many people, for me, it has become more background noise than anything else, and Rep. Culberson’s voice is certainly a part of that noise (it’s hard to listen to 700 some people talking all at the same time). But to see Twitter turned into a political martyr, well, that’s just pathetic. There are rules that govern the conduct of members of the Congress that have been in place for a long, long time. I haven’t read them, so I don’t really know if they prevent elected officials from engaging in these types of forums, but I can’t imagine they would. The issue brought to light was not about Twitter but instead about official statements being made available through non-official channels.

Slice it however you like, but I don’t think that Rep. Culberson’s tweets can be considered to be “official statements” and I doubt very highly that anyone in “the leadership” gives two thoughts to the twitterings of a 3 term representative from Texas. However, it does raise a couple of interesting questions: What is or is not an “official statement” from an elected official? And, is having this kind of window into our government something we want, or is it just another way for politicians to get their message into our heads?

Greg Hollingsworth is a marketer and blogger who also writes about politics on Devil’s In The Details.

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