Throughout the 2008 campaign, candidate Barack Obama insisted he was running not to empower himself, but instead to empower ordinary citizens like you and me.

Now he has to prove it.

Twice now, President-elect Obama has asked ordinary citizens to vote on the questions they most wanted him to answer. Twice I submitted this question:

"Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor - ideally Patrick Fitzgerald - to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?"
-Bob Fertik, New York City

In December my question was #6, but Obama only answered the top 5. Now my question is #1, and it is getting attention beyond the blogosphere.

On Wednesday the New York Times featured the question in an article by Michael Falcone:

Advocates of a Special Prosecutor for Bush Seek an Answer From Obama

With few exceptions the transition period has been a model of presidential goodwill and cooperation. Apparently, the curious users who have been submitting questions on President-elect Barack Obama’s Web site, Change.gov, didn’t get the memo...

Though the Obama team has promised to answer some of the top questions as early as this week, they have not said whether they will respond to Mr. Fertik’s, which has received more than 22,000 votes since the second round of the question-and-answer feature began on Dec. 30.

Today, Ari Melber of The Nation explored the importance of Obama's answer - or failure to answer:

The national press corps has not raised this issue [whether to investigate and possibly prosecute Bush] with Obama since his victory. (When it surfaced in April, Obama said he would order his attorney general to "immediately review" the potential crimes.) And while the leading question in the last Change.gov forum was dispatched breezily -- Will you legalize marijuana? No. -- this one is far more challenging, both substantively and politically.

The Times notes that Obama's team has "not said" whether it will even answer Fertik's question, though ignoring the question that came in first out of 74,000 would turn this exercise into a farce. A terse, evasive answer would be similarly unacceptable. After all, there would be little point in this online dialogue if it reiterates things we already know, (Obama is not in N.O.R.M.L.), and refuses to provide new information.

That's why this may be the first big test for Change.gov as a genuinely interactive dialogue.

In my mind, it's not just a test of Change.gov, but really a test of Obama's fundamental commitment to citizen power. Obama has five choices:

1. Ignore the question, as he did in December
2. Brush it off with a trivial answer, as he did with the marijuana legalization question
3. Disagree at length but without responding substantively to the serious arguments advanced by his supporters, as he did when he flip-flopped on FISA
4. Disagree by responding substantively and inviting continued discussion to try to find agreement on an issue many citizens care deeply about
5. Agree

If he chooses #1, we'll have to give him an "F" for citizen empowerment. If he chooses #5, we'll give him an "A." That would indeed be change we can believe in! 

Update 1: Henry at Crooked Timber assumes the Obama administration disagrees with its supporters about the need for a Special Prosecutor, and will therefore find a way to avoid responding to my question.

There’s been a lot of talk about how the new architecture of MyBarackObama.com, Change.gov etc are going to enhance the agenda setting power of the president. This will likely happen in some instances, but in others, as here, the volunteer movement going to be more of a bully than a bully pulpit, setting the agenda rather than serving as a glorified force-multiplier for things that the president would like to see happen. Being a cynic, I suspect that the Obama people are going to discount and try to distance themselves from the bits of the architecture that they can’t control, but if I’m right, they may have some difficulty in so doing as these forums take on a life of their own.

If Henry is right, Obama might as well abandon the idea of using the Internet as a "force multiplier" because the Internet is truly a two-way medium, and the people who use it are not obedient sheep.