It should be pretty obvious what my political leanings are if you’ve more than skimmed the surface of this blog in the past few months. I’ve tried to keep it from taking over the site, as (1) I’m not sure I have a lot to add to the public political discourse that other, more amazing people (like, say, Al Giordano, Nate Silver, Rachel Maddow, Ta-Nehisi Coates, etc.) haven’t already said; and (2) The speed at which things have been happening the last few weeks (months?) has been so breakneck, it’s hard to keep up. But, if you’ve noticed the cute little banner in the upper-right hand corner of every page on this site, yeah, you can tell who I was rooting for. And, if you’ve read my Tweets, you can probably get a sense of my elation at the conclusion of the first stage of this process on Tuesday night.

It is, of course, quite exciting to see this new stage begin — the other day, the President-Elect’s transition team unveiled change.gov, a website to track and chronicle the incoming administration’s choices, solicit feedback from the public, and generally attempt to be much more transparent than any other Presidential transition team in history. I take this site with grain of salt — like with anything officially branded by a campaign, it’s a public relations tool as much as anything — but isn’t this exactly the kind of public relations we need? That is, not “public relations” as euphemism for “pulling the wool over your eyes,” but “public relations” in the sense of… relating to the public? Though I’m not naive enough to believe that the incoming administration will be truly transparent with all the people who got them to this position (nor do I necessarily want this to be the case), I am heartened to see some steps in this direction.

What has me so excited by this are the steps towards making government finally a two-way street — the Internet has been, of course, a great resource for the Obama campaign to reach voters, take their donations, and help people organize. But, how will all of these innovative uses of the Internet scale up to the realm of actual governance? Change.gov seems to indicate that this President, unlike every single one before him, will at least carry through with the appearance of transparency during the transition to office. What needs to happen is that these official sites become simply the beginning, and we hold him accountable to increased transparency of the executive branch, and further development of digital ways to get involved with the future of governance in the United States. For the first time in my lifetime, being involved with political action from within the governing body of the country seems appealing and productive.

But, this is not to say it has to stop with the Halls of Government — I’m encouraged by calls to continued action from various voices on the Left, the networks built up during Obama’s run who are now aching for more to do. Both the Field Hand readers of Al Giordano’s blog and Nader supporters (via November5.org) actively plan to continue holding this new administration’s feet to the fire. I’m undecided on how exactly I want to be involved with these sorts of groups personally, but hope the genie’s out of the bottle: It’s about time the Internet was used by those in power and those who put them there in ways that actually leverage what the Internet is in 2008 — a communication/networking space, not simply an online replacement for direct mailing (the approach which so dominated the Right’s use of blogging in 2004).

The Internet has never been a simple delivery device for content, and it’s about time we had a government — and populace — which understands this. I’m certainly looking forward to the next few months, and am cautiously hopeful about the next four years.

(P. S., Thank you, Ohio. I miss you, and knew you wouldn’t let us down.)