WASHINGTON — Everyone remembers the CBS forged memo scandal.
The apex brand in news magazines (yes, I know it was 60 Minutes
II, but still) was brought down by the blogosphere. But there
was another New Media coup shortly before that which was at least
as crucial a turning point in the 2004 election.
Bill Clinton had just gone into the hospital for heart surgery.
President George W. Bush delivered a speech in Wisconsin in which
he offered kind thoughts and prayers for the former president. At
which point, according to the Associated Press, “Bush’s audience of
thousands in West Allis, Wis., booed.” Even worse, “Bush did
nothing to stop them.”
Recall at the time, the Democrats were experiencing a boomlet of
success with their “Republicans are mean” meme. The Republican
National Convention had just wrapped up and Democrats were spinning
Sen. Zell Miller and Vice President Dick Cheney’s speeches as too
harsh and personally destructive of John Kerry. Meanwhile, the
media backlash against the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was in
full flower. Now this; hateful Republicans booing an ailing
former-president for the crime of being a Democrat.
Only it never happened. And within minutes, audio clips of the
speech popped up on blog after blog proving the “Republicans booed
Clinton” story was a fabrication. Within hours news vehicles were
running the following correction: NOTE: This is a correction to
an incorrect story posted by AP on Friday stating the crowd booed
the President when he sent his good wishes. The crowd, in fact, did
NOT boo. Bush crisis averted.
So much has been written about the battle between the New Media
and the Old Media, but not enough has been written about the
extraordinary value blogs offer political campaigns. Indeed, not
having a deep and wide relationship with the blogosphere in the
modern political environment is roughly equivalent to not running
campaign ads.
A national campaign (or high-profile down-ticket campaign)
without a detailed, goal oriented, and well-executed blog strategy
cannot win in today’s environment. Any campaign that seeks to work
within the old-style news cycle is doomed to failure. Cable news
may have created the 24-hour news cycle, but blogs have destroyed
the news cycle altogether. No news cycle exists, only one
contiguous conversation being conducted through millions of PC’s at
every moment of every day. Choose not to be part of that
conversation and your campaign is doomed.
AND BLOGS ARE NOT JUST GOOD for defusing negative stories. They can
be a valuable vote-getting tool as well. Indeed, I posit that in
the modern political environment, blogs and Internet marketing are
more consequential than advertising. This sounds crazy on the
surface. But consider John Kerry and George W. Bush spent roughly
the same amount of money on campaign ads for roughly the same
length of time saying roughly the exact opposite things. Given the
closeness of the race, to say nothing of the closeness of the 2000
election, it seems clear that unless one campaign vastly out spends
another, campaign ads allow you to battle to a draw. Quality
advertising represents a barrier to entry into the world of
electoral legitimacy, but it does not dictate victory or
defeat.
The Bush campaign recognized this and re-heralded in a new era
of grassroots retail politicking. Through a detailed
micro-targeting effort, the Bush campaign exercised Abraham
Lincoln’s dictum: “Divide the county into small districts, and
appoint in each a sub-committee to make a perfect list of voters
and ascertain with certainty for whom they will vote and on
election day see that every Whig is brought to the polls.” The Bush
campaign identified people into small districts, all right, but
these were virtual districts. Instead of targeting geographic
neighborhoods, the Bush campaign targeted neighborhoods of gun
owners, Christians, small investors, even NASCAR fans. They then
asked credible, third party spokespeople to reach out to undecided
voters in these communities. The Bush campaign understood the
modern political campaign is not won at the political, opinion
leader, values, or even issues levels any longer, but rather at the
lifestyle level.
Tactics like this will only get easier — and more necessary —
as blogs continue to proliferate. I’m not just talking about
political blogs. A campaign cannot win simply by having a direct
line into Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit.com (though that wouldn’t hurt).
Targeting lifestyle blogs will be fundamental to electoral
success in the future.
Here’s an illustration of how this might work. In New Hampshire,
there are perhaps tens of thousands of residents who do not
consider themselves Republicans or Democrats. They probably do not
consider themselves political at all. But they do consider
themselves snowmobilers. Meanwhile, there is nary a Democrat
candidate for high public office who has not supported a measure to
infringe snowmobilers’ rights on public land at some point. But no
campaign could afford to dedicate advertising dollars on such a
narrow group of prospective voters (especially considering the
backlash potential among seniors, the chief complainants of
snowmobile noise). But if your Republican campaign has an open line
of communication with snowmobilers’ blogs and message boards, you
have a built in mode of communication to a highly targeted,
motivated, and potentially explosive voting group.
The same model can be followed for virtually every lifestyle
lived among America’s atomized population. For example, on the
other side of the aisle, Democrats would be crazy not to reach out
to the web surfers who register gripes and complaints with
corporate watchdog sites like www.planetfeedback.com. Aggrieved customers of monster
corporations are a perfect target audience for Democrat
campaigns.
WHERE ATTENTION HAS BEEN paid to the relationships between
political campaigns and blogs, only the negative aspects have shone
through. Markos Moulisas of the Daily Kos got hammered on Fox News (and other
places) when it was revealed he had a financial arrangement with
the Dean campaign to provide “technical assistance.” Before that,
two South Dakota bloggers got in some embarrassingly hot water when
it was revealed they had been paid to advocate on their blogs for
then-candidate (now Senator) John Thune. Yes, paying for advocacy
cheapens the blog medium, which is supposed to be a spontaneous
engine of free speech. But these are credibility and ethical
questions. Not legal or regulatory ones. Moreover, if what your
campaign seeks is credible, third-party testimony, Kos and GOP
bloggers are not your best avenue.
Of course, blogging has its limits. There are those who believe
Howard Dean’s campaign perfected the medium. Blogs shoved an
obscure former Governor from a tiny state into the nation’s
spotlight. For a brief moment Dean looked as if he would ride the
blog phenomenon to the Democrat nomination. But I was in New
Hampshire before the Dean implosion. And I predicted a Dean defeat
because I saw his staff and activists hanging out in bars and cyber
cafes, confusing unfettered speech with genuine political activism.
In the end, Dean’s army of cyber supporters flunked the
Get-Out-The-Vote test. Blogs are an answer, not
the answer.
Two thousand eight will be the first presidential election
without an heir presumptive since 1968. And blogs will play a
monstrous role in the campaign of whichever candidates emerge from
their respective fields. With blogs, the conversation between
politician and voter is contiguous. Those thinking of running for
president in 2008 should start the dialogue now.
