Can They Win, One Tweet at a Time?

With the 2012 campaign approaching, David Plouffe is looking for every opportunity to sharpen Obama's edge.

He has leaned heavily on the 10-person department that handles digital outreach and launched efforts to interact with the public, including a series called Advise the Adviser, in which citizens are invited to write in policy recommendations. He has also issued calls for Americans to organize roundtables, using online White House tools, to discuss immigration policy. "There is no guarantee that you are going to get any of those people through any other means," he says, noting shrinking audiences for TV news. Sometimes, Plouffe just creates his own news. For the recent White House Correspondents' Dinner, Plouffe's team created a fake movie trailer in the spirit of the Oscar-winning film The King's Speech, hoping it might go viral. The YouTube video of Obama's remarks has already been watched more than 8 million times, a bigger audience than that of most nightly network newscasts. "People saw that and said, 'I am going to share it with my family and friends,'" Plouffe says proudly. "You have to find ways to compound what you are doing."