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Issue Of The Week: Monday, August 21, 2006
Getting Real About Politicking Online
by Heather Greenfield
New mediums of communication are shaping not just how information reaches potential voters and donors but what words are said. Or, at least it should, according to the latest campaign advice from both Democratic and Republican consultants.
While the message in the Velveteen Rabbit was that love makes you real, political consultants are telling candidates that with the new media, real makes you loved.
Presidential hopeful John Edwards talked openly about being more real at a recent convention with software developers, the authors of Web logs, and people who produce downloadable audio clips called "podcasts." Edwards agreed when one attendee said blogs capture how people actually talk and that is much different than how politicians speak.
"The problem is that we're so trained and so conditioned over a long period of time that being normal and real and authentic requires you to shed that conditioning," Edwards said at the Gnomedex Technology Conference.
From LBJ To John McCain
Naomi Baron, an expert on the use of e-mail, blogs and text-messaging as communication tools and a linguistics professor at American University, does not believe the Internet and new technologies have created demand for informal political communication. But she does believe they sped up an existing trend that she pinpointed to the presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Larry Powell, a communications professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, whose expertise is political communications, agreed. He said former presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton captured hearts with their down-to-earth personalities, but Powell added that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was the first politician to do that well over the Internet in the 2000 Republican presidential primaries.
"He understood the Internet is not just a way of communicating with voters but letting voters communicate with you," Powell said.
Conservative and progressive political consultants have many clients hoping to capture the magic of 2004 Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean when it comes to fundraising, which they attribute to cultivating loyal supporters online.
Diane Thompson, CEO of Campaign Superstore, a conservative high-tech political consultancy, said it is sometimes tough to get her clients to understand that posting a Web site and bombarding people with e-mail solicitations does not work. Thompson said she encourages her clients to build a loyal following through numerous e-mails and sending helpful information that establishes a candidate as credible and personable.
"There are no shortcuts to building meaningful relationships," said Kari Chisholm, the founder of Mandate Media a high-tech political strategy company. "You've got to be authentic."
"Ned Lamont understands that," he added of the Connecticut Democrat who earlier this month upset Sen. Joseph Lieberman in a Democratic primary. "That's part of his appeal." Lamont's campaign has a blog and became a favorite of bloggers who some credit with helping build Lamont's early support and media attention.
Baron said the challenge with writing a blog is sounding off-the-cuff and accessible while really having content that is highly polished and well-conceived. Powell said most politicians would do better with streaming audio than blogs, as they are more used to talking casually than writing.
'My Son Is Not A Pig'
Chisholm's definition of successful new media writing is Colorado Secretary of State Ken Gordon. "He sends e-mails that are clearly Ken sitting at home in his pajamas, telling people what he thinks," Chisholm said. "They're funny and passionate."
In one example entitled "My son is not a pig," Gordon relayed the story of a mother at a news conference who tearfully defended an education program for autistic children that helped her son -- a program that some had called special-interest "pork" and demanded be cut. Chisholm said the e-mail title alone would lead people to open it.
Thompson noted e-mails she gets about once a week from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich as an example of someone using the medium smartly. "He picks two or three issues of the week," Thompson said. "It's candid. It sounds like him talking and it's insight you're not going to get anywhere else."
Chisholm added: "Most e-mails we care about come from real human beings. If a candidate wants to be taken seriously in e-mails, be human."
Advice on how to be human varies. Baron said she would not advise typos or misspelled words, "People want a politician who is as smart or smarter than them."
Powell said it may be OK for bloggers to be edgy in online comments but warned against those running for office being too blunt online. "It's real easy to put a mole [from an opposing campaign] on an e-mail list," Powell said. "The opposition monitors daily. They will look for anything to use against you."
But then, there are risks of not being bold. "If you're going to be authentic, you have to take risks," Chisholm said. "Risk avoidance is a plague among campaign staffers."
Other advice includes better tailoring messages to the medium, instead of simply posting documents to the Web or using formal letters as e-mail. Chisholm said the days of a five-paragraph press release with three stiff-sounding quotes are gone -- or at least should be. "That's totally true," Powell said. "If you're putting a press release on the Web site, it's better to have a shorter statement with links to other things."
Powell said people do not seem to mind receiving press releases via e-mail if they include notes at the top saying something like, "This will be released to the press; we thought you might like an early look."
Personality: The Key To Political Success
"How do you be authentic and be meaningful? It's a character issue," Chisholm said.
And a personality issue. What is authentic for some, just does not work for others. "Clinton knows how to pull your heartstrings by being very folksy," Baron said. "[President] Bush's speaking sounds very, very artificial when he uses words more than three syllables. I don't think Sen. Ted Kennedy is ever going to have a folksy blog. Dianne Feinstein is not. But it's OK because she's earned her credentials over the years."
Chisholm added, "I don't like George W. Bush too much, but he's an authentic human being."
In the New Republic Online, self-proclaimed progressive Elspeth Reeve agreed that you do not have to like someone to respect their candor. Reeve said it is not the terrible things and lies Ann Coulter utters that make liberals cringe so much as when she hits a nugget of truth. "Asked to define the First Amendment, [Coulter replied], 'An excuse for overweight women to dance in pasties and The New York Times to commit treason.' Just completely terrible, I know. But I have to admit, I giggled," Reeve wrote.
Humor seems to be an element of authenticity -- or at least the appearance of it. Baron said humor is critical to gain attention in an era when someone may be engaged in several types of new media at once -- e-mail and instant-messaging on several screens, for example. "For an e-mail, people have come to expect lots of humor," Baron said.
She said the goal is to make people feel welcome. "Welcome is the same thing as authenticity," Baron said. "It could mean humor, a punchy choice of words. It could be informal, but very carefully crafted."
She cited the writing on the blog Wonkette as great but said despite the candid tone, it is crafted through many drafts. "That's how you come across as authentic, by not being," Baron said.
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