Obama to host Google+ Hangout after State of the Union (VIDEO)

GlobalPost

Only days after President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address he’ll be available to hang out, on Google+.

President Obama will host a Google+ Hangout on Jan. 30, which he announced on The Official YouTube Blog. The interview will be live-streamed and several people will be selected to join the video chat, MSNBC reported. The YouTube blog made this announcement because in order to join in on this conversation with the American president, you have to submit a video and text question to the official White House YouTube channel, MSNBC reported.

From there anyone, and everyone, is invited to vote on their favorite questions and the people who submitted the top-voted ones will be invited to Hangout with the president.

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This is Obama’s latest social media push after he hosted a Twitter town hall over the summer. However, that forum disappointed some when the president only answered pre-selected questions from Twitter users but didn’t actually respond on Twitter itself, CNN reported.

According to the White House, the Google+ Hangout is an example of Obama’s commitment to “creating a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration,” CNN reported.

The Hangout will follow Obama’s annual State of the Union, which he will deliver on Tuesday. Many have pointed out that the goals Obama outlined in previous State of the Union speeches have remained unfulfilled, such as reforming immigration laws to meeting monthly with congressional leaders of both parties, the Associated Press reported.

“State of the Union addresses are kind of like the foam rubber rocks they used on Star Trek — they look solid but aren’t,” said Jack Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College, the AP reported. “Presidents will talk about solving some policy problem, and then the bold language of the State of the Union address disappears into the messy reality of governing.”

Americans’ satisfaction with the nation’s economy has dropped 23 percent since 2008, with only 13 percent of Americans no satisfied, a recent Gallup poll showed, US News and World Report reported. This has proved to be the lowest rate of satisfaction among Americans and biggest decline in any of the 24 issues Gallup surveyed.

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