Mark Story has a great post that throws water in the face to those idealists that think we’re about to have a full fledged Web 2.0 presidency.  In fact, it is one of the best straight talking posts I’ve read in a long time.

He takes on Dan Froomkin and his article on The Huffington Post It’s Time for a Wiki White House, which lists off a bunch of “probable’ things an Obama White House would bring.

In Reality Check, There Will Be No Wiki White House, Dan, Mark perfectly makes a point by point rebuttal of Froomkin’s pie in the sky predictions:

Sorry to burst your bubble, Dan, but I work in Washington at a fairly high level in government.  Here’s what is NOT going to happen:

  • Blogs: White house staffers may, in fact, be allowed to have their own blogs, but they will be so watered down by legal concerns that I fear that they might turn into a Twitter feed: “Just went out for coffee.  Tastes burnt.”  In a town where secrets are coveted but leaks like a sieve, there would be little compelling news to keep a blog fresh, but more importantly, interesting.  The lawyers will do what they do, which is lawyer things to death.
  • Streamed meetings: Only the most vanilla meetings will be streamed.  There is a reason why reporters are kicked out of the room when the real stuff happens.  Anything else would be staged like a FEMA press conference.
  • Daily calendar. The President’s Daily Calendar would have to omit outside appearances, which would gut its effectiveness, because of Secret Service prohibitions.  And why tell the opposition party that you are meeting on something that you might want to keep in-house.  To do otherwise would be stupid.
  • Policy wiki. Major policy proposal proposal workspaces?  Too many cooks spoil the broth.  Research Selogene Royale’s presidential campaign in France.  She turned her Web site into an electronic “listening tour” and requested policy input from French voters.  She ended up with a party platform that stretched from Normandy to Nice.  This is good in principle, and lousy in practice.
  • Campaign promises?  Trust me, the Republicans will do that for them.  And if they don’t keep a campaign promise, do you think the Web site will have a big, red “X” in the “We Didn’t Keep This” column?
  • Other tools: Twitter and .rss are good ideas, but I doubt that you need “pull” tools to draw attention to the President-Elect.  These are good ideas if you are launching a company and trying to build traffic, but President-elect Obama won’t stay up nights wondering about his unique visits to WhiteHouse.gov.

I saw mindset this before with Brian Solis’ piece in TechCrunch.  Not foolishness, but overly idealistic mindsets that “don’t get it”…meaning don’t get Washington.  

That being said, we need the Brian Solis’ and the Dan Froomkin’s to keep the ball moving forward. That’s because idealism causes progress.

Now, no doubt that Obama will be the most Web 2.0 president in history.  No doubt his White House will be more open than that of his predecessor.  But what we’ll see happen is that most citizens will feel that their lone solitary voice isn’t enough.  They’ll need to bind together with like-minded people.  And since they all can’t head to Washington, from time to time they’ll make sure that someone does speak for them here.  These people are called lobbyists.

We’ll definitely see change, it just won’t be as engaging as many feel.