Presidential blogging
: Now that the Bush/Cheney campaign has a weblog up, it’s interesting to compare and contrast with the other presidential candidates’ blogs. The contrast is clear:
The Bush blog is, of course, all about seeing the news through rose-garden-colored glasses. Every story is spun to show us what great shape the world is in today: “Good Signs on the Job Front… Economists Predict 5% Growth… Jobless Claims Fall to 8-Month Low… Return of power brightens Iraqis.” There are a few scheduling items: who’s on what show when. There’s no interactivity, no community. No surprises there.
The Dean blog, on the other hand, is almost all community and campaign and almost no news. Community has been the secret sauce to Dean’s campaign and online strategy. So there’s no surprise there, either.
The Clark blog is pretty much just a calendar of events. Considering the fight inside the campaign about whether to be interactive, that’s no surprise, either.
Meanwhile, Edwards blogs about his flight delay. At Bloggercon, Ed Cone lashed out at the quality of this blog. So there’s no surprise here, either.
The weblogs are true to the personalities of their campaigns.
It strikes me that campaigns should not have just one weblog each.
Dean should, of course, continue with its secret sauce of community. But I’d also like to see a weblog with the Dean campaign spin on the news so I can get a better idea of what the guy’s thinking.
Bush would be wise to try to build community as well (if they have the guts).
In other words, I want to combine the best of both and see a battle of the blogs.
And Clark and Edwards? They should either decide to do blogs right or not bother.
