Glaser Reviews the Dean Blog
Posted on:: August 8th, 2003
Mark Glaser at Online Journalism Review reviews the Howard Dean weblog. It’s a good piece on why campaign blogs matter.
He regrets that Dean’s own contributions are rare and usually not very revelatory. Hard to argue with that. But not everyone is born a blogger and not everyone should be writing a blog. That’s why the Dean For America blog isn’t Howard Dean’s blog. It’s his campaign’s. You’ve got staffers (including sometimes the campaign manager) writing about issues and events, and you’ve got Kate O’Connor’s highly personal blogging from the road with The Gov. I think the blog is brilliant. (I am biased, of course.)
Categories: Uncategorized dw
I feel like Glaser is setting up a straw man. Although the blog is perhaps misleadingly called The Official Howard Dean Weblog; it’s clearly the campaign staff’s blog. You go to deanforamerica.com for messages from Howard Dean, and go to to blogforamerica.com to get daily blogs from the campaign staff.
Another thing to consider is that blogging doesn’t really seem, well, presidential. We still tend to view the president as a king, an exalted figure who stands above the fray. That vision has changed since Watergate (and Monicagate), but I do think people still assume the President is someone who’s too important to be accessible, and certainly too busy to be keeping a daily blog.
If Dean wins, maybe he could do a weekly blog to replace the weekly radio address. But I don’t think that blogging on a regular basis during the campaign is going to help get him elected.
Look at Schwarzenegger. He doesn’t need a blog, and he will do more damage to the Democrat party with the help of mass media. Wait until the Clintons show up in CA. And, Bush doesn’t have to lift a finger.
While Bush says that Arnold would make a good governor, you coulnd’t find a democrat who could say one good thing about any other. Problem is, people like Lieberman are fighting for the “centrist” crown, and are trying to prove to the American people how close they are to Bush’s position. They would prefer to save the vitriol for their own kind.
Also, Dean’s appearance on the Today’s show with Matt Lauer was very awkward. If he can’t learn how to use the camera effectively, all the blogging in the world won’t help. He comes across as being angry and defensive. When Larry Flynt and Gary Coleman demonstrate more charisma, you know you’re in trouble. DH
David, given your advisory role, I have to say that calling BlogForAmerica “the official Howard Dean weblog” is misleading. At the very list I’d put a fuller explanation directly under that photo/tagline.
I would also like to see more in-depth justification for policy plans (vs the horse-race coverage and boosterism which seems to cover most of the current blogging). Fine, he’s for universal HealthCare. But what does that really mean? Why should anyone agree with that plan? What are the problems with (fairly-portrayed) alternatives? What are the potential costs, and where will that money come from? (It’s OK if that’s not written by him, as long as he explicitly reviews/endorses every word.) The tricky part is maintaining a human voice when diving into such detail.