Cory Booker, Twitter Visionary

AUSTIN, Tex. â€" Cory Booker â€" the mayor of Newark and a virtual Twitter superhero for his chronicle of the city â€" made the trip to the annual South By Southwest conference here on Sunday to impart his tips and perspective on why Twitter is a valuable tool for governance and civic engagement.

Mr. Booker credited a phone call from the actor Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk on Twitter) for turning him on to the reach of social media â€" “I thought I was getting ‘Punk’d,’ ” he joked, referring to the MTV hidden-camera show produced by Mr. Kutcher â€" and said he agreed to try the service for three months. After a month, Mr. Booker said, he was hooked, calling it “transformative.”

“The future of government has to be getting to 2.0,” Mr. Booker said, calling for “a collaborative model where we’re all like Wikipedia” and a space “where we all become partners in transformation.”

Mr. Booker is no rdinary Twitter user. Fewer than 300,000 people live in Newark, yet Mr. Booker has over 1.3 million followers on Twitter. As Steven Snyder, an assistant managing editor at Time magazine who moderated the discussion with Mr. Booker, pointed out, “We’re used to very scripted politicians,” and Mr. Booker’s Twitter feed “is the opposite of that.”

Mr. Booker took to Twitter to invite his neighbors who had lost power during Hurricane Sandy to take refuge at his house, and he used it during a recent blizzard to find local residents who were trapped by the snow â€" stopping by their homes to shovel them out or deliver diapers.

His Twitter good deeds have even prompted a gently mocking hashtag â€" #CoryBookerStories. (Sample post: “One time I needed a kidney. Cory Booker instantly ripped out his own, handed it to me & flew away. #CoryBookerStories.”)

To hear Mr. Booker tell it, Twitter simply provides him with an effective and hyper-efficient ave! nue to provide the services that are part of being mayor. “I will find out before anybody in my government when a light is out, when a pothole is there,” he said. “I can now show up with a space heater and blankets. I can now take a level of action I couldn’t before.”

Social media, he said, can also empower citizens to take more of an active role in government: “Our voices are really more amplified.”

“This is a period in America where we must bring more authentic engagement to our political sphere,” Mr. Booker said. “We’re losing the soul of our politics.”

His hourlong discussion was rapid-fire and earnest, which largely matched the mood of the crowd. During the question-and-answer session, he made a point of asking each questioner’s name and talking about where they were from. At one point, a woman raised her hand and asked the mayor what advice he had for her two boys â€" ages 12 and 13 â€" about civic engagement, and if they could shake his hand after the panel

He paraphrased the novelist Alice Walker, “who said the most common way people give up their power is not knowing they have it in the first place.” (And of course, he added, her sons could be first in line to meet him.)

Based on the Twitter messages while the panel was going on, the audience was largely impressed and, to use a word that frequently popped up, “inspired” by Mr. Booker. Afterward, nearly a third of the people who were there surged to the front of the auditorium, eager to continue the conversation and greet Mr. Booker, who gamely stayed on to pose for photographs and shake hands.

But a small group of tech entrepreneurs and political operatives gathered in the back to complain that while Mr. Booker had clearly mastered social media as a tool, he had not harnessed its full potential to shape government.

Still, Mr. Booker seemed to captivate the room, mixing Twitter humor (“Sleep and I broke up. I’m now dating coffee â€" she’s hot.”) with feel-good c! ivics les! sons (“I cannot be anymore the mayor who sits behind his desk and waits for the world to come to me.”)

When a man wearing a Red Sox hat took the microphone, Mr. Booker joked that they should not be calling on a Boston sports fans. When the man replied that he was from New Jersey, Mr. Booker, who has publicly flirted with the idea of running for New Jersey’s Senate seat in 2014, made a point of noting that.

“You’re from New Jersey, which means you might be a potential voter of mine,” Mr. Booker said. “I take back that insult.”

For One Night, Sequester Becomes a Punchline

President Obama has indeed brought change to Washington: in exchange for his white-tied presence on Saturday night, he successfully pressured the journalistic elite at the 128-year-old Gridiron Club to shorten its often interminably long annual dinner roast.

Yet he still got his licks in, even as he took his share of them.

“As you know, I last attended the Gridiron dinner two years ago,” Mr. Obama said. “Back then, I addressed a number of topics - a dysfunctional Congress, a looming budget crisis, complaints that I don’t spend enough time with the press. It’s funny, it seems like it was just yesterday.”

Perhaps only in the capital could he warm up a crowd by starting with jokes about the “sequester,” te indiscriminate across-the-board spending cuts that took effect this month after Mr. Obama and Republican lawmakers could not agree on a deficit-reducing alternative. (By day, the Obama team is not laughing, given the widespread criticism of the Secret Service’s decision to suspend White House tours for the summer because of the budget cuts.)

“I know some of you have noticed that I’m dressed a little differently from the other gentlemen,” Mr. Obama said to the roughly 650 journalists, members of Congress, Cabinet members, governors, ambassadors and military brass. “Because of sequester, they cut my tails. My joke writers have been placed on furlough. I know a lot of you reported that no one will feel any immediate impact because of the sequester. Well, you’re about to find out how wrong you are.! ”

Predictably given his audience, he also poked fun at one of the town’s most famous journalists, Bob Woodward of The Washington Post, for his recent spat with the White House over sequestration - in particular for Mr. Woodward’s public suggestion that Gene Sperling, Mr. Obama’s top economic adviser, had threatened him if Mr. Woodward continued his criticism. (E-mails between the two show a  friendly, if disagreeable, exchange of ideas.)

“Who knew Gene could be so intimidating” exclaimed Mr. Obama, to the knowing laughter of those familiar with Mr. Sperling, who starting in the Clinton administration developed a reputation for being earnest and conciliatory. (Mr. Sperling was present at the dinner; Mr. Woodward was not.)

“Now I know that some folks think we responde to Woodward too aggressively,” Mr. Obama continued about the man who first gained fame for helping to bring down President Richard M. Nixon for the Watergate scandal and since, as a book author, has been criticized for skewering public figures who do not cooperate with him, and favoring those who do.

“But hey,” the president said, “when has - can anybody tell me when an administration has ever regretted picking a fight with Bob Woodward What’s the worst that could happen”

“As you may have heard, Bob invited Gene over to his place,” Mr. Obama added. “And Bob says he actually thinks that I should make it too. And I might take him up on the offer. I mean, nothing says ‘not a threat’ like showing up at somebody’s house with guys with machine guns.”

The best-received Gridi! ron speec! hes from politicians mix jabs at others with some self-deprecation , and Mr. Obama offered just a little. Alluding to tough decisions that were looming, he said, “I have my top advisers working around the clock. After all, my March Madness bracket isn’t going to fill itself out. And don’t worry - there is an entire team in the Situation Room as we speak, planning my next golf outing.”

The president combined a reference to his recent outreach to Senate Republicans with a dig at them for opposing Chuck Hagel, a former Senate Republican himself, for confirmation as defense secretary.

“I’m also doing what I can to smooth things over with Republicans in Congress. In fact, these days John McCain and I are spending so much time together that he told me we were becoming friends. I said, ‘John, stop. Chuck Hagel warned me how this ends up.’ ”

Mr. Obama also tweaked his 70-year-old vice president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., who also was absent, over speculation about his future ambitions.

“Look, it’s no secret that my vice president is still ambitious,” he said. “But let’s face it, his age is an issue. Just the other day, I had to take Joe aside and say, ‘Joe, you are way too young to be the pope. You can’t do it. You got to mature a little bit.’ ”

Before the president’s speech closed the evening - which lasted just over three hours instead of the usual four-plus - he sat on the dais in the ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel for the u! sual teas! ing skits from the 65-member Gridiron Club and dueling speeches from a representative of each party. Just as then-Senator Obama was the Democratic speaker at the club’s 2006 dinner, this year’s picks were two politicians seen as potential presidential contenders: Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, a Democrat, and Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a Republican.

After four years, Mr. Jindal could still get laughs making fun of his Republican response to Mr. Obama’s 2009 State of the Union address - a widely panned performance in his debut before a national television audience.

“Even though the president is sitting up here looking calm and relaxed, he’s actually up here quaking in his boots. He is terrified that I’ll upstage him again, just like I did in that State of the Union response,” Mr. Jindal said.

The son of immigrants from India, Mr. Jindal joked about the talk of his 2016 ambitions, in a way that drew one of Mr. Obama’s heartiest laughs of the night.

“My answer is I have no plans to run. I’ve made that clear over and over again - in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina,” Mr. Jindal said. “I mean, c’mon,” he added. “What chance does a skinny guy with a dark complexion and a funny name have”
Both he and Ms. Klobuchar made much of the diversity of the evening’s main speakers - an Indian-American governor, a woman  senator and the first African-American president.

“I! know the! governor, the president and I agree on one thing,” Ms. Klobuchar said, teeing up one of the night’s most applauded lines. “One day soon, maybe not this year, maybe not even in our children’s lifetime, but one day you will once again have a white male politician speaking at the Gridiron.”