Douglas Brinkley: In the age of Twitter, political history "comes and goes in a nanosecond."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House and Republicans are competing to shape the first draft of history after an epic battle over the debt, but the next chapter could be critical in deciding who wins the message war.

Now that the threat of a crippling U.S. default has been averted, dueling narratives are in play -- and each side is hoping to gain traction with opinion-makers and voters as the 2012 election race looms....

"This is the age of Twitter when contemporaneous history comes and goes in a nanosecond," said Douglas Brinkley, a political historian and author at Rice University in Houston. "Politicians have only a narrow window to make their case and try to make it stick."

Feeling that sense of urgency, both sides have used everything from mainstream media and news websites to blog posts and Twitter messages to try to win over a public mostly fed up by weeks of acrimony in Washington....