Twitter is a very good way to capture what someone is thinking about at a particular moment in time. These people will be far less guarded in revealing their thoughts as they won’t know that voters, let alone biographers, will someday be poring over them.

Twitter accounts could be even more useful for biographies of people who will become presidents a few decades from now. The accounts of presidential aspirants, while also filtered, give a sense of what aspects of their personalities they believe should be emphasized to advance their political goals. Twitter may help future historians in another way: by giving them insights into a politician’s thinking before he takes the oath of office. Bush had tweeted all of the books he was reading in his book-reading contest with Karl Rove, we wouldn’t have had to wait until Rove’s December 2008 Wall Street Journal column to get a fuller sense of the seriousness – and the sheer number of books – Bush was reading as president during a time of significant challenges. Obviously, a lot depends on how the president uses the account, but if George W. The presidential Twitter feed could potentially provide significant detail and insight into what is influencing the president – or whether an issue is even on the president’s mind. In other words, what might initially seem as mere entertainment can have historical value as a fuller perspective of the administration takes shapes. As I discovered when writing my book on the presidency and pop culture, what a president is reading or watching can influence his language or approach to pressing issues of the day. If this Twitter feed is indeed written by the president – as this one appears to be – it is potentially a way of getting less filtered presidential thoughts in a way that other media do not provide. Even though we must recognize that the feeds will of course be filtered by political considerations, even here they can give a sense of what a president is willing to reveal.Ī personal presidential Twitter feed brings something that other forms of White House social media, written by people other than the president, do not. The account may also be able to tell us what Obama is thinking about at a specific time, in much the same way that diaries have done in the past. Bush, showing more bipartisanship than he is usually credited with.

President Obama started following the Blackhawks, White Sox, and the Bulls, but not the Cubs – which was of course noted by Cubs fans. At a minimum, the account is a window into a president’s likes and dislikes. Soft stuff so far, but the account bears watching, as it could prove useful for future presidential biographers.

Potus twitter screenshot