Grassroots Supporters in Campaign Mode
CHETRY: Welcome back to the Most News in the Morning. In about a half hour, the Obama administration will unveil its plan to tackle the banking crisis, and try and get credit flowing again. The White House will have some help, taking their message to the streets. Thanks to an army of Obama supporters who are once again operating almost like campaign mode. Jim Acosta is live in Washington with more on the story for us. Hey, Jim.</s>JIM ACOSTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. President Obama won the election with the help of an army of grassroots supporters who organized online, then took their message to the streets. Now, the president is calling on his volunteers once again to sell more than a campaign.</s>ACOSTA (voice-over): Don't tell them the race is over. Once volunteers for the Obama campaign...</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I just want to ask you if you support that and if you're willing to the sign this.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, definitely.</s>ACOSTA: ... a vast grassroots network of supporters is back on the trail...</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Basically, here's the plan.</s>ACOSTA: ... reactivated. This time, to sell the president's agenda.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Could you be interested in signing up?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I'm interested in talking about it.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm not saying that I'm interested in supporting all of his plan.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm part of a nationwide movement today called Organizing for America.</s>ACOSTA: Michael Lafemina was one of hundreds of volunteers who went door-to-door from New York...</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No money is involved.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Really? I've got my checkbook here.</s>ACOSTA: ... to California on behalf of something called Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic Party run by remnants of the Obama campaign.</s>MICHAEL LAFEMINA, OBAMA VOLUNTEER: I don't feel like I'm volunteering for President Obama. I feel like I'm volunteering for myself, for our country, for our democracy.</s>ACOSTA: How do they do it? Using the campaign's old e-mail list, Organizing for America alerted supporters to visit its Web site, where a message from the president was waiting.</s>OBAMA: Talk to some neighbors and let people know how important this budget is to our future.</s>ACOSTA: And voila!</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you can provide your name, some contact information, we would send you some information.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would be happy to do that.</s>ACOSTA: The mission on this outing: to blunt criticism from Republicans...</s>SEN. JUDD GREGG (R), NEW HAMPSHIRE: If we maintain the proposals which are in this budget, over the 10-year period that this budget covers, this country will go bankrupt.</s>ACOSTA: ... and even a few skeptical Democrats over the president's budget.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm especially concerned about the long term.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's not trying to pass the budget. It's coming out of my pocketbook.</s>ACOSTA: As Michael Lafemina found on Long Island, not everybody is sold.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's already crippled the</s>ACOSTA: These volunteers insist they can take the heat.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Keep up the good work, Obama.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We support him 500, 2,000 percent.</s>ACOSTA: That's right, let them film it. Now, if it works, Organizing for America could put its volunteers to work again on other White House plans, giving the administration a ground force that can gather signatures and work the phones to push the president's agenda. It has all the makings of a campaign before the re-election campaign, Kiran. They're not quite putting the band back together, but it's close.</s>CHETRY: Yes, exactly. And they are certainly getting an earful depending on whose door they knock on.</s>ACOSTA: Yes, absolutely.</s>CHETRY: Thanks so much, Jim. John, I don't care! I don't care! Let them film me!</s>ROBERTS: Exactly. That guy had his opinions and he wasn't shy about sharing them, that's for sure. It's half past the hour, and here are the big stories on our agenda in the next half hour. First, breaking news. Two deadly plane crashes both involving Americans. The first in Butte, Montana. The FAA says 14 including seven children were killed after a plane crash and burn in a cemetery. Federal investigators are on their way right now. And in Tokyo, Japan, a FedEx jet crashes into a fireball. The jet bouncing off the runaway before bursting into flames. The pilot and co-pilot were killed. They were the only ones on board. And finally, new details on the revamped bank bailout just minutes away, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will roll out the White House plan to tackle the banking crisis and get loans flowing to families and businesses again. Well, the first family have graced the covers of "People" and "Us Weekly." Now a Web site and television known for chasing down Hollywood celebrities is turning its cameras on Capitol Hill. Are politicians really the stuff of tabloid fodder? Harvey Levin is the host and executive producer of TMZ's television show, and he joins us now live from Los Angeles this morning. Harvey, thanks for being up at this ungodly hour in Los Angeles. I know that you work a pretty late work day, so thanks for getting up. We really appreciate it.</s>HARVEY LEVIN, TMZ HOST: No problem, John.</s>ROBERTS: So why are you turning your sights on Washington? Can you really make celebrities out of politicians?</s>LEVIN: Well, we've been there for a year now, and I love it. And my feeling about this is that there are people, a lot of people in this country who want to care about politics and they don't and they feel badly that they don't. I think what we can do is we can show a lot of people who never look at political stories, the personalities of Washington, D.C. and there are personalities. And once they get invested in the people, I think they're going to start caring about what those people are saying.</s>ROBERTS: One of the personalities that you seem to be enamored of is Congressman Aaron Schock. You followed him around a little bit. We got some videotape of that. Let's show it to our folks at home.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Congressman, what would you say has been as fair as you or President Obama?</s>REP. AARON SCHOCK (R), ILLINOIS: I don't know. I have to match up sometime.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How is the nightlife in D.C.?</s>SCHOCK: I haven't been out.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No?</s>SCHOCK: No.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just too much work?</s>SCHOCK: That's right. All work, no play.</s>ROBERTS: Aaron Schock of Illinois there, a 27-year-old guy, maybe an up and coming star in Congress. Yesterday, Howard Kurtz had him on "Reliable Sources" and asked him to show his abs. He didn't take the bait. But what are you trying to do here, Harvey, following these congressmen around like that, asking them very personal questions?</s>LEVIN: Well, I mean they're not very personal questions. I mean, we're trying to like get a little bit of their personality out of them. We found Senator Burr not too long ago driving a '74 VW thing with the top down in a snowstorm and it was hilarious! And he said that he has never seen this kind of reaction, that all these people in North Carolina who never really talk to him about politics and seen this and they just thought it was really, really engaging. And I think it's the same thing with Schock that he is reaching a lot of people that he couldn't reach if he just played inside the Beltway.</s>ROBERTS: So at this point, it's all a lot fun. You're trying to uncover some of their personalities but you know, TMZ is known for covering celebrities when they are in less than desirable circumstances. Are you going to start going after these politicians the way you go after some celebrities? You know, I think back to 1988 in the election campaign, Gary Hart's famous line "catch me if you can." Are you going to be out there trying to dig up dirt on these guys as well?</s>LEVIN: We're not bedroom police. And if you look at the site, I mean, so much we do with the site is just benign fun. I will say that, from time to time, a good story does come along and a couple of weeks ago, we did a really good story, I think, on Northern Trust where we followed all of these people around. This is a bank that got $1.6 billion in bailout money. We filmed all of the stuff that they were doing, all of these lavish parties and our story caused them to give $1.6 billion back to the taxpayer. So my feeling is we can have fun and then, in between, we can do some stuff that maybe is a little bit more important.</s>ROBERTS: Well, you certainly have broken a lot of stories out there in California. Welcome to Washington, Harvey, and</s>TMZ. LEVIN: Good to be with you this morning.</s>ROBERTS: All right. Thanks so much. We got 34 1/2 minutes now after the hour.</s>CHETRY (voice-over): While big banks get bailouts, what do little banks get?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We sometimes have a line out the door of people transferring their deposits from those institutions to us. We wanted to go back to the old days. We wanted to go back to face-to-face banking.</s>CHETRY: The new bonus of doing business with a little bank now ahead on the most news in the morning.