Last night the Tank, a performing arts space in New York City, hosted a progressive-leaning panel discussion on "Campaigning, Blogging, and Fighting Back". On the panel: would-be Edwards blogger Amanda Marcotte, MyDD blogger and former Bob Menendez Internet Director Scott Shields, and Ari Melber of the Nation.
About 80 people turned out to hash over things blogging and politics. What came out of the night was that even in a fairly homogenous group -- engaged and online-active New York City progressives -- there's no clear take on whether, in 2007, it makes sense to integrate bloggers and other online activists into official campaign structures. Amanda, for example, judged that going on board with the Edwards campaign made a lot of sense for both her and the organization. Majikthise's Lindsay Beyerstein (whose recent Salon piece detailed why she turned down the Edwards job) likened it to bringing 'a warthog into your living room.' (I wish I had scribbled down the exact quote. It was brilliant.)
Also considered -- whether the political landscape is slowly shifting to where campaign staffers aren't treated as proxies for their candidates. And if it is shifting that direction, the question was asked, should those interested in online politics help put a little giddy-up in that process?
Michael
That's why Lindsay Beyerstein's article made so much sense. And was so revealing. The fact that the Edwards campaign was looking for star power without checking Marcotte's writings (which had made her a 'star') shows incredible naivete to what blogging is about and/or indifference to what political communications is about.
Bloggers, in that capacity, are professionals - and should be treated and vetted as such.
It's not all that clear what Amanda was hired to do. But I'd bet it wasn't to port the role of the traditional spokesperson online, exactly. I look at my own experience working for Mark Warner. Any of us on the Internet team could blog or comment on behalf of the organization. Now, it wasn't in a spokesperson role, but some largely undefined hybrid of speaking-in-own-voices and extensions-of-the-organization. The reason it worked in our case, I'd argue, is that we all came to it with a strong sense of what would be appropriate for someone working in that capacity. (And we erred on the side of caution.) I think we can't get away from the question of what the aim is in hiring a high-profile blogger for a position like that. And what I'm stuck on now if the idea is to confer some of the online credibility of the blogger onto the candidate. Accepting that premise, I do think "proxy" makes sense.
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Proxies or Spokespeople?
Most staffers don't fall into the proxy category, and never really have. If a typical staffer did or said something stupid in public, the campaign would generally fire them to put distance between themselves and the ill-advised action. That's a function of guilt by association.
Look at Cardin's staffer last year. She made comments that could be construed as anti-Semitic. Nobody suggested she was speaking for the campaign, and she was not a spokesperson. She just did something stupid, and the campaign did not want to be associated with it.
Marcotte, on the other hand, was hired to speak for the campaign via blogs. She was hired as a spokesperson. Suggesting that she is only a spokesperson for 8-10 hours per day, and turns that off to rant in private (or in her case very publicly) for the remainder, is foolish.
That wasn't a matter of a campaign staffer treated as a proxy for their candidates. It was a matter of someone who wanted to speak for the campaign, but still maintain an independent voice. That's just not realistic.