“Good evening, I’m Andy Card — Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush. I welcome you to the inaugural ‘Ask the White House’ online discussion. I am pleased to be here tonight to answer your questions. The Internet is an important communications medium. We have witnessed, especially during Operation Iraqi Freedom, a substantial increase in the amount of traffic to Internet sites as more and more people — worldwide — are relying on the internet for information. | We see the ‘Ask the White House’ series as another way for our citizens to interact with the White House. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and answering your questions during tonight’s online discussion. | With that, I’m happy to begin . . . ” Andy Card
—Ask the White HouseWhite House)
While this appears to be the perfect set-up for some Onion-style humor (see “Ask a High School Student Who Didn’t Do the Required Reading“), it’s actually the introduction to a real event that took place last night. Card’s responses are a bit dry, but I hope this feature returns. When it does, the new transcript will probably replace the one I’ve linked to, which is annoying. They should put a copy of the transcript in an “archive” file right away, if they’re really serious about following up with similar events featuring other government figures. It’s a good experiment in providing raw blogger fodder, unmediated by professional journalism practices.
My pageant wagons move! But the script needs work.
"You did it more than once!," she wrote, according to the transcript of the conversation,…