I'm quoted in this (really good) article about the challenges for online activism in today's political culture: The Obama campaign showed how digital tools can fuse the personal touch of local organizing with the powerful message of a national candidate and create a large, mobilized, virtual community, but online strategist Brian Reich is still looking for signs that Barack Obama the president can make the political personal as deftly as Obama the candidate made the personal political. "Obama did that extraordinarily well during the campaign because it was decentralized," says Reich, who is also a former staffer to Vice President Al Gore, "but the White House is the ultimate top-down communications vehicle." The traditional polarity of governance is not the only challenge to grassroots engagement by the White House." - Brian Reich