Bill Clinton explains power of blogging

Bill Clinton is all for blogging.

The former U.S. president said he was flipping through articles he had collected on health care reform and climate change not too long ago, when he realized that he’d saved more clips from blogs than he had from newspapers.

And then there’s the fact that he thanked about 1,800 bloggers and political activists gathered for a conference Downtown last night for “dramatically elevating our public discourse” through blogs and other online forums.

But, he added, “I’m pleading with you. It’s okay if you want to keep people honest . . .but keep this within the lane of getting things done.”

Clinton’s speech was the keynote address for Netroots Nation, a convention for people who use the Internet – whether it’s through blogging, Facebook, Twitter or any other number of tools – to spark political action. Through this Sunday, the conference attendees, who call themselves netroots, will attend sessions in the David Lawrence Convention Center discussing topics ranging from how to use the Internet to prompt political activism, to how to understand the idiosyncracies of Congress, to how to separate the hype of Twitter from its reality, among other subjects.

The netroots, mostly 20-something to middle-aged liberals judging from the crowd’s numerous standing ovations and rounds of applause, blog largely to hold their government leaders accountable for their actions, said Chuck Rocha, political director for the United Steelworkers labor union.

“At the end of the day, we want the have nots to have a say. . .They’re sick and tired of being sick and tired,” said Rocha, one of more than a half dozen people to speak before the slightly red-faced and hoarse former president last night.

Rocha praised the netroots for helping elect current President Barack Obama, who used Facebook among other tools to spread word while campaigning.

“It’s up to us to make this president do what he promised he would do,” Rocha said. “It’s up to us to keep the pressure on.”

Clinton told the bloggers they “hold the seeds in a generation” where public discourse dominates much of the Internet. People who read blogs their blogs trust the information they contain and tend to attribute any errors to “the head, not the heart,” meaning that they would be honest mistakes and not intentions to mislead people, Clinton said.

He encouraged people to use that power to push for health care reform and climate-changing initiatives.

Clinton said Obama’s election was the first one in which people were “self-consciously communitarian – understanding we are going to rise and fall together.”

“We live in an interdependent nation and an interdependent world,” he had said just moments before.

All of that being recognized, he said he also asked bloggers to express a little patience. Major change, such as improvements in the economy or improvements in funding for higher education, take time he said, adding that the right kinds of political activism could cause change to continue for the next 30 to 40 years.

“I’d like to see more blog sites say, ‘This is what I’d like to see President Obama do, and this is what I’d like to see Congress do . . .and, dear readers, this is what you can do,” Clinton said. “Don’t get downtrodden, and don’t get pessimistic. . .We should believe we’ve been given this staggering possibility.”