It’s clear that the The White House thinks there’s power in social media. They might actually believe in too much, honestly.
The big news on Wednesday was that President Obama named a successor to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died around a month ago. Right away, of course, the Republicans said they wouldn’t nominate anyone that Obama picked, because, let’s face it, they are terrible at their job and have no interest in taking their responsibilities seriously.
Obama’s pick, Merrick Garland, no matter how qualified he is, is going to have a severe uphill climb. So the White House made him a Twitter account, @SCOTUSnom, to help garner public support.
It sent out the first Tweet from the account very early in the morning:
.@POTUS will announce his #SCOTUS nominee at 11am ET.
Follow along to get the facts on his nominee & the nomination process in the Senate.
— SCOTUS Nomination (@SCOTUSnom) March 16, 2016
It then used the account to justify Obama’s action of nominating someone (it’s sad that they really needed to do that for an act that is specifically outlined in the Constitution, but that’s where our politics are now)
Filling a #SCOTUS vacancy is not a political prerogative—it is a basic function and fundamental obligation. pic.twitter.com/wHRNpQ2ZlE
— SCOTUS Nomination (@SCOTUSnom) March 16, 2016
The last time a president’s Supreme Court nominee was denied a vote?
1875.https://t.co/OI0bmv6H5M #SCOTUS pic.twitter.com/SkrbGwks7z
— SCOTUS Nomination (@SCOTUSnom) March 16, 2016
Once Garland was announced, the White House then used the account to introduce him to the world.
Chief Judge Merrick Garland oversaw “every aspect of the federal response to the Oklahoma City bombing.” —@POTUS pic.twitter.com/kTeiAyAtPc
— SCOTUS Nomination (@SCOTUSnom) March 16, 2016
Meet Chief Judge Merrick Garland, the President’s nominee to the Supreme Court. #SCOTUSnominee https://t.co/ACujysyyDJ
— SCOTUS Nomination (@SCOTUSnom) March 16, 2016
It’s an interesting strategy on the part of the President and his staff, to create an account solely dedicated to the purpose of getting their nominee through. It’s unlikely to work, of course, as it isn’t going to change the minds of anyone so dug in that they really believe that we should go a whole year and change without a complete set of judges on the Supreme Court.
What it does highlight is now media and Internet saavy this White House has been. While Facebook was invented in 2004, and Twitter since 2006, neither had the power they have now. Obama has really been the first President to exist in the age of social media, and he has tried to use it to his advantage.
The White House launched the @POTUS Twitter account in May of last year. His first Tweet has been liked over 415,000 times, with over 283,000 retweets. Then an official Presidential Facebook page came in November. The POTUS Twitter account now has 6.74 million followers, while the Facebook page has 1.7 million likes.
In January the White House even joined Snapchat. My favorite White House related social media account, though, has to be Joe Biden on Instagram, which he joined in 2014, and which launched with a picture of the Vice President’s Ray Ban sunglasses.
The Supreme Court is not as technologically advanced as the White House, to put it mildly. They still don’t allow cameras inside the court room, so any of them becoming active on social media would be a leap forward that the instutition is in no way prepared to make. So this is likely as close as we will get to that happening for the foreseeable future.
The question is: will this make a difference? The answer is, probably not, as the account, which has been up for 12 hours or so, has only 25,600 followers.
(Image source: twitter.com)
