Text Your Representative in Washington

As Mr. Chenault described to us today in class, the internet and forms of new media such as text messaging and iphone applications have become increasingly important to political campaigns. Trent and Friedenberg predicted this evolution, although in the text they focus primarily on candidate websites. The Obama campaign clearly runs a third-tier website, where you can find not only information about the candidate and his platform but also information about the movement; multimedia galore including blogs, personal voter posts and candidate responses, and youtube videos; electronic applications that get you involved and help you organize; and, moreover, all this is also available in Spanish. Perhaps the percentage of candidates who run such a website is outdated in the text, but I'm willing to bet not many people running for public office have a website of this caliber.
I'm amazed at the organizational skills of this campaign and their use of new media. They seem to have thought of everything (and with a founding member of Facebook on board, maybe they have), to have taken every angle of attack to get people involved, all without creating a chaotic mess of bureaucracy. I'm very interested to know how this will carry-over to Obama's administration, if elected. It seems that his staffers have found unique and modern ways to mobilize people for political purposes: people have more faith in not only voter efficacy but in their ability to hold elected officials accountable. What if, a year from now, text messages went out to 4 million individuals who then called or wrote (or texted?) their representatives in support of a bill? Why should their be any lag between decisions made in Washington and voter response? Is this a significant step toward governmental transparency and responsiveness?