When one looks at the depths of U.S. presidential politics, there is a balance between who is perceived as having succeeded and who has failed.

We write thick biographies and create college courses on the considerable accomplishments of our favorites. In pragmatic contrast, there is an old saw that means to convey how much federal structure has been built up over time.

The only two decisions a president gets to make are when to drop the bomb and where to put the library.

It’s with that logic that I’ve found myself feeling a certain sense of predetermined indifference. I’ve long loved following local politics more than federal, on the whole, because it’s my belief that those actors impact my life in a far more tangible way than those federally.

There are no good U.S. presidents, just good times to be president.

Good times

• When a new gamechanging technology is invented, like the Internet
• When there is an enemy of state, like after 9/11
• Right after a global recession, like perhaps next term

Bad times

• When there is a global recession, like now
• When there is a hostage situation, late in your second term.

When the inevitable annual news story comes out about the latest politician having cheated on his wife, people question why leaders cheat.

There are some obvious reasons to me:

1. Long campaign hours — Same as workaholics, being away from home offers a lot of opportunity for philandering.
2. Lots of people interaction — When campaigning and legislating, you deal with a lot of people.
3. Charismatic, passionate leaders — Elections attract people who often have the attractive qualities.
4. Sense of entitlement — Those who do good, big work (like legislators) can easily convince themselves that they’re owed a little wrong.
5. You’re the boss — In interviews and campaigning and voting and such, legislators are taught to make and stand by their decisions. Not all of them are the right ones.

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter gave an hour of his time this week to answer resident questions that came to host NBC 10 by way of email, Twitter and Facebook, as we reported on Technically Philly in sharing video of the event.

Nutter has already been praised for use of Twitter – a move we had asked him about during a Q&A in July 2010 , a few months before the city imported communications director Desiree Peterkin-Bell, who had helped transform Newark Mayor Cory Booker into an urban political social media star.

The Ask the Mayor event — prompted by NBC 10 social media hire Lou Dubois and Bell — was unique, interesting and compelling. NBC 10 deserves credit for only sharing a single softball question — about cheesesteaks, of course — and Nutter and his team deserve praise too for participating in something new and relatively open. It was clear and admirable that Nutter hadn’t been prepared for the questions.

Granted, none of those questions amounted to public affairs journalism, but many did seem to represent the perspective of Philadelphians. Watch the five video segments of the event here or watch the first below and see what I learned about Nutter watching them.

What was most interesting to me though was the opportunity to watch some 40 minutes of Nutter speaking without a speech. I came away with a few takeaways about him:

1. He knows governance — Throughout the several dozen questions, Nutter offered very practical, straightforward answers. He seemed like a smart, practiced man of governance. And that has largely been the most accurate swipe against him: he’s been just a competent caretaker. Any high-minded rhetoric we heard from him was — get ready for the surprise — while campaigning. Remember Nutter the tax man? That said, I was impressed to see the inspiration set aside for directness. One thing that hasn’t changed — from his days on City Council — is that he is good in the wonkish detailed corners of government.
2. He hasn’t fully grasped the public-private partnerships his administration has embraced — I’m interested in being able to separate what decisions a leader OKs and what decisions a leader seems to lead, if not conceive of himself. The city is full of examples of cost-cutting private partnerships — something I’ve seen with a growing frequency — but I didn’t catch any highlight of that at all. Nutter quickly mentioned PhillyRising, but not its use of community groups. When asked about the need for trash cans in South Philly, I expected a call for civic action. He didn’t, nor did he talk about any of the other initiatives in that vein. He had a traditional top-down perspective on governance.
3. He hasn’t lost that ‘dry wit’  — When first running for mayor in 2007, every profile that came out mentioned Nutter’s ‘dry wit,’ his deadpan demeanor. If you catch it, he’ll make you laugh. At one Nutter press conference I was in, I asked what differentiated Philadelphia enough to earn a grant from IBM, he looked at me and said, “we’re just better,” and, for a moment, looked for another question, before a trickle of laughter brought him to dive a little deeper. Yes, I remember that Michael Nutter. In the fifth segment of the NBC 10 piece, Nutter answered with exaggerated disbelief at a resident’s request for the city to shake down people who rummage through recycling. “Of all our problems, I am not going to send people after someone with a cart to get a few aluminum cans,” he said. He was funny: “I was feeling some kind of way,” he went on earlier. He can be fun — and, well, he can even do so while acting black — but it’s not something he has always succeeded at sharing, like the legendary Ed Rendell.
   
4. He still doesn’t have a central issue – This is not news (and Patrick Kerkstra has argued it’s an asset) but it seemed as clear on this night as I had ever recognized before. I remembered candidate Nutter talking tough on crime because he needed to do so and really seeming to dive into the ethics and efficiency of a new Philadelphia government. Yet, in an hour of question answering, I heard no talking points on making City Hall cleaner, leaner and greener, though he does have progress to point to. Early on, I had thought technology would be of interest to Nutter — its ability to cut costs, offer transparency and improve systems seems to fit — but nothing has emerged. He was even fed a question about the city’s Wireless Philadelphia initiative and had no real answer. The public-private partnerships mentioned above or the green movement abounding citywide could be subjects to grab hold onto, but I didn’t see it. He got handed a crappy economy — I buy into that — but nobody’s central issue should be a recession.
5. He thinks his central issue is education — He was given a great question: what was the city’s most important problem and how he and others were facing it. He went hard on education and was suddenly where he got the most rhythm of the night. “It should be the centerpiece of everything we do.” He called for volunteerism and for parents to demand more of their kids. With Arlene out — even if she was the victim — maybe that is a subject he can run with in a second term.

Back in July 2008, I finally got around to updating a WordPress.com I had been using to track the work I was doing on my undergraduate honors thesis researching the future of the beleaguered Philadelphia Republican Party.

Two and a half years later, in looking to get a jump start on a 2011 resolution of ordering my online presence, I have abandoned the WordPress.com and brought that blog, its research and my final research paper to a subdomain here.

THESIS.christopherwink.com

I won’t be updating it. Rather, I just wanted a more stable, professional and suitable location to some dated work of which I am still proud and, believe it or not, I still get emails from people closer to what I covered than I certainly am.

Give it a look (perhaps most specifically the research paper from May 2008) and let me know what you think.

Credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

I was in Washington D.C. on Saturday when the Rally for Sanity, put on by the crew at the satirical Daily Show, which is already been billed as the Woodstock for my generation.

I didn’t really see or hear much,  as there were some big audio problems and, well, maybe as many as 215,000 people were there. But I suppose that won’t much matter.

I was there, or near there, specifically, and, of course, there in the broader sense of being 24 at a time when people my age were trying to do something.

I’ve read through quite a bit of what happened there, listened to the speeches and read the words.

• CBS News piece
• Guardian photo album
• Jeff Jarvis loved the thing
• Examiner photos of rally signs
• Buzzfeed photos of rally signs

Listen to Stewart’s closing speech below, read it here or watch it here.

I don't find this constructive. Photo by Kim Baker

Ultimately, no one can argue with the populism of calling to back down the divisiveness and trying to work together. I can support that like anyone.

But I’m always skeptical of too much enthusiasm there. Despite Stewart’s words, which were beautiful and will be surely remembered for a long time, I don’t much believe anything much will happen because of it. Woodstock didn’t cause anything, to be sure, it just came to represent something.

Maybe this will too.

When I was leaving the Online News Association, which actually had me in D.C., and walking toward the Mall, I kept walking across mostly young people — but not entirely — who wore the stickers and T-shirts of the rally and held a sign or had a word or flashed a bumper sticker of attacking as abruptly the right as most at the rally would accuse the right of attacking the left.

There were a lot of signs and a lot of people, so I’m certainly not speaking about everyone. But I’m not convinced that those in Stewart’s camp who would criticize without hesitation those with dissenting views are necessarily the minority.

Some of those examples could be seen in the wildly popular rally signs like here, here, here, here and certainly here.

It’s that circle — in which we justify name-calling and derision by saying the other side did it first — that leaves me less than moved by the moment I was so near to.

Despite the enthusiasm, I’m the reason why getting 60 percent of 170 million registered U.S. voters out there would be a triumph.

I’m fairly politically aware — even my interests are more in local policy than national — and have been involved in government and campaigning in the past. But, like most Americans, I have an excuse.

I spend most of the time leading up to an election pondering the journalism around it, listening and debating both sides — in short, seeing the election through my own prism (in my case, that means something of a balanced journalist).

I feel like most do just that: see the election as an abstract in one’s own sense of self. So the activism, it seems, is someone else’s work.

I do vote, though not in many primaries because I am registered independent, and I do follow the discourse and prepare ahead of time, but much of my preparation is, like most swing voters like myself, very last minute.

So I decided, if only for me, I’d get together the voting resources I use most and usually spend the Monday before Election Day searching for.

In Philadelphia, the four resources I share with friends the most often and a new one:

• Find your elected officials here — This is for finding out who is marginally affecting your life by voting on legislation that someone else writes.
• Find your polling place here — This is for when you don’t where you even go to vote.
• Register to vote here — This is for coming into a new state or changing an address or party affiliation.
• Find your registration status here — This is for young people who have moved so often in recent years that they don’t even know where they last registered.
• Google Elections here — This is trying to cover all the above information.
• Voting Totals here — Information and links  on voting results in Philadelphia from the Committee of Seventy.

Madeline Albright, at left sipping a drink, alongside Vaclav Havel, with his back to the camera, at the Wilma Theater on May 26, 2010.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright seemed to enjoy the production just fine.

That was the lede I submitted to Philadelphia events blog uwishunu in my review of last month’s U.S. premiere of ‘Leaving,’ the first piece in a generation from acclaimed playwright and former Czech President Vaclav Havel, at the Wilma Theater on the Avenue of the Arts in Center City Philadelphia.

Both after leaving the bathroom before the show and sitting in my third-row seat as the curtain opened, I eyed the tiny, graying lady sitting to the right and chatting with Havel, the revolutionary who was on hand to watch the premiere. Both times I gave second glances. The first time, I just thought I recognized her and dismissed it as some Philadelphia notable.

The second time, my guess was clear: that woman was the first female Secretary of State and President Bill Clinton top adviser. I dismissed it again — no security, no commotion, no press. Turns out I was right, and, boy, that has to mean something for the future of news, doesn’t it?

A friend handles some of the promotional work for the theater and confirmed my guess, aside from her, my next best assurance was another journalist there to review the opening — from online-only startup Broad Street Review.

Turns out the premiere was indeed covered by The Wall Street Journal and the Prague Daily Monitor, and NPR’s All Things Considered rushed down to get in front of Havel. The eminent Inquirer Worldview columnist Trudy Rubin was on hand to interview Havel and filed something the following Sunday and something ran a week later ran in the local paper’s social column.

That’s heavy coverage from legacy media, but it just seemed to smack of the type of exclusionary journalism that the web has started to break. By my count, the first (remotely) official report that a major head of state was chatting with a former lead liaison on U.S. foreign policy was an unsure tweet of mine (with an admitted misspelling of Albright’s first name).

It’s important to note here just what a big deal Havel is considered in many circles –an internationally-acclaimed playwright, a revolutionary, dissident Liberty Medal Award winner and former head of state.

This was a major U.S. premiere of his latest play at a glitzy Center City theater and the only established local game in town there was a foreign columnist.

Both of the city’s largest alternative-weeklies, CityPaper and Philly Weekly, checked their reviews in early.

The rest came from two online sources — one self-funded and the other, for which I was there, a project of the region’s tourism board.

We continue to be the media.

[My 'Leaving' Review]

Below, watch Havel talk in 2007 about the Communist regime in Cuba.

Vice President Joe Biden speaks at the annual breakfast for political watchdog group the Committee of Seventy on Nov. 23, 2009 inside the Park Hyatt at the Bellevue Stratford. Photo by Christopher Wink

Gov. Ed Rendell walked onto the stage in front of several hundred guests at the Committee of Seventy‘s annual breakfast and made a joke at the expense of the political oversight group’s president, Zach Stalberg.

“Don’t you think Zach was a lot more fun when he at the Daily News?” Rendell asked of Stalberg, who was an editor at the Philadelphia tabloid before departing for a gig at Seventy in 2005.

The featured guest of the affair was Vice President Joe Biden and, like Stalberg before him, Biden seemed all business.

His 30-minutes worth of remarks after being welcomed by a standing ovation of business leaders and Seventy supporters inside the swanky Park Hyatt-Bellevue Stratford, were focused on defending his administration’s heady list of priorities.

“What would you say can wait?” he said rhetorically to critics, listing the economy, health care, two wars, educational standards, and energy policy.

“It’s not that a new energy policy has been tried,” he said. “It’s that it’s been found difficult and left untried.”

He went on to make a case that the stimulus is working to create jobs.

Aside from a five-minute Phillies-themed opening, the only break from dour policy defense and occasionally raising his voice to a near shout got the laughs many seemed waiting to give out.

Of President Obama winning a Nobel Peace Prize, Biden said: “Sometimes I wonder why I didn’t get one too.”

“That’s a joke,” he said.

Zack Stalberg speaks at the annual breakfast for political watchdog group the Committee of Seventy on Nov. 23, 2009 inside the Park Hyatt at the Bellevue Stratford. Photo by Christopher Wink

Every Election Day since November 2004, with an occasional exception, I’ve worked with the Committee of Seventy, a more than century-old political oversight nonprofit in Philadelphia.

I always come away with stories.

As I did in last April’s primary, below, I’ll share some of the best from last Tuesday’s election, a relatively low-profile affair, including just a couple citywide offices and a dozen state and municipal judicial positions.

For the first few elections I worked, I was assigned a portion of the city and trekked to all the polling places there, watching for myriad of common violations, excessive electioneering, improprieties and the rest. The past few general, primary and municipal elections though have seen me, with others experienced in the organization (I spent a year as a policy research and graphic design intern), holed in a Center City office building answering questions and directing the field teams, I started on.

In this capacity I get the chance to watch all the complaints that pour in — from field teams, to polling officials, legislators, their staffs and, yes, citizens, too.

I only worked from 6:30 a.m. until just after 1 p.m., so my experience only accounts for half the day.

Some of the quirkier complaints, as written both in the voice of Seventy phone operators and the voter callers themselves, that came in through the hot line system (215 557-3600):

• From 19th and Ellsworth in South Philly: “[The second machine] is giving off red dye on people’s fingertips, which may be an indication that fingerprints are being taking. These machines are computerized, so I don’t understand why this is happening unless it is set up to do this.”
• From 57th and Haverford in West Philly: The caller is complaining of a power outage at a polling place located at 57th and Haverford.
• From 2521 N. 23rd St in North Phily: “Workers there were talking entirely too loud, and I couldn’t concentrate on my voting. This is a continuous problem I have had with this group.”
• From E. Cheltenham Ave & Charles St at the Wissinoming Recreation Center in Northeast Philly: …The voter expressed skepticism regarding the location. I tried two different databases and got the same info. I also gave her the telephone number for the Bd. of Elections.” [No followup on what "skepticism" means]
• From 370 Devereaux Ave. in Northeast Philly: “The voter works for the Philadelphia Fire Dept. and complained that due to the length of his applicable shift — 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. –  it is virtually impossible for fire department employees to vote. I told him I would forward his complaint, noting that the Committee of Seventy has been advocating liberalized absentee voting requirements.”

If you’re interested in volunteering with the group go here, or read more about them here. See a video on Seventy below.

A panel held by Refresh Philly on the Future of Local Politics on the Web at the Comcast Center in Center City Philadelphia Nov. 2, 2009. From left: Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce CEO Rob Wonderling; pa2010.com contributor Benjamin Barnett; Young Philly Politics contributor Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg and myself who moderated. Photo by Sean Blanda

Whether Web technology and social media can have a major impact on local politics in a place like Philadelphia or if they remain secondary tools, became the major topic and a divided one at a panel that served as the November Refresh Philly meeting.

The hour-long panel discussion, which I moderated, was entitled the Future of Local Politics and the Web.

• Panel member Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg, a co-founder of progressive policy online forum Young Philly Politics, seemed dogged in his assessment that the Web remains a supplementary tool to traditional campaign field operations.
• Panel member Benjamin Barnett, the micro-blogger for statewide campaign news site pa2010.com spoke about the role the Web could have in boosting the profile and followship of otherwise limited candidates, most notably citywide Republican candidate in heavily Democratic Philadelphia.
• The third panel member Rob Wonderling, the new CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, was careful not to overstate the role the Web can play on a municipal level but split somewhere in the middle by noting its role in championing transparency and responsiveness of government.

While that discussion remained most present during the event, there was plenty more to be had. Below some other take aways, video of the event and questions I didn’t have time to ask.

“You first have to convince people that the election matters and then you’d also have to convince them that you’re a candidate worth choosing over the other guy,” Urevick-Ackelsberg said in dismissing that a Republican candidate, like city controller candidate Al Schmidt who won a perhaps surprising endorsement from the Philadelphia Inquirer without much of a murmur online, could use the Web more aggressively and overtake a machine backing of incumbent Alan Butkovitz.

“But someone like Al Schmidt has no other option,” countered Barnett. He should be cultivating ever voter he can online, in addition to the face-to-face interactions he’s been chasing during civic association meetings all over the city, as I’ve seen in the Northeast.

OTHER PERSPECTIVES

Wonderling seemed skeptical about the use of the Web to overcome challenges local campaigns face.

*Below, I ask him if a candidate needing to drum up support — like, say, the Philadelphia Republican city controller challenger Al Schmidt example from above — could more heavily rely on the Web to reach more voters.

Below watch a small snippet of Wonderling comparing his use of social media and the Web in his two campaigns — in 2002 and then 2006. “Technology:” Wonderling said, “it is a tool, a communications tool.”

“My 16-year-old son will never buy a TV when he is old enough buy one,” Wonderling added. So campaigns need to find other ways to bring their message to voters of that demographic, he continued.

OTHER QUESTIONS

Despite the platform, the time and what seemed like a genuinely engaged audience, I had to leave aside some questions I wanted to discuss:

• Is the political social media and otherwise Wed-backed movement overblown entirely? Pres. Obama is credited with revolutionizing online campaigning, but he’s also known for a massive, engaged and organized field operations team. Are the two connected?
• How might the 1999 mayoral campaign of Sam Katz — a progressive, business-centric Republican who lost by fewer than 9,000 votes to Democratic black machine candidate John Street — be different in today’s climate of Web tools for promotion and organization?
• Are municipal campaigns ignoring the potential to build their own audience, and bypassing the media, as shown to be powerful nationally by Sarah Palin’s near personal derailing of the health care debate with her “death panels” Facebook note?
• Can the transparency proclivities of the Web overcome the fracture or altogether loss of the city’s trustee media?
• Can the Internet get more people involved in the electoral process?
• Shouldn’t the Web used a great deal more in government and administration if not policy and campaigning? (This is was partially answered, with nods given to the idea that the political establishment in the city doesn’t want to erode its power by unleashing that power.)

MEDIA AND TRANSPARENCY

Below, watch Wonderling give a sense of some value to how the Web might force candidates and their campaigns to be more responsive and attentive to voter reaction online. “It creates an environment, I think, in campaigns in the future where there will be greater transparency,” he said.

Part of Barnett’s answer: “There has to be room for this,” he said of Web-based niche news.

“I don’t think you can replace local media with volunteers,” said Urevick-Ackelsberg.

PBS Mediashift has a timely post on political use of the Web to bypass traditional media.

CRITICISMS OF MODERATION AND CLOSE

I pledged to limit my blathering and let the bright panel do the heavy lifting. While I did that to some extent and tried to sum up points as the conversation wore on before moving on elsewhere — as I tried in the above video — I did find myself expending too many words to ask a question.

After Wonderling speaks in the above video, I ramble for at least 40 seconds before asking Barnett a fairly straight-forward question: is there a comparison to be made between campaign transparency in the future through the Web and a devotion to openness that many tried news-gatherers devote themselves too?

I think the best moderators say, likely, the fewest words, so that’s a big area in which I need to develop.

I was pleased with the conversations that were brought up, but a few topics didn’t make it due to time constraints — we finished by 7:45 p.m. in respect to the pivotal game five of the World Series, which may have done its part to keep the crowd to a modest 35-40 ,out of more than 60 registered.

Here’s to many more events like this in the future and the continued hope we can all learn something and improve our city and our country and our world… or something like that.

Many thanks to Roz Duffy, Refresh Philly, the panelists and the audience.

*All video taken by Sean Blanda.