CPAC 2007
by Patrick Ruffini :: February 28th, 2007 10:26 pmI will be at CPAC for the next couple of days, blogging and connecting with a growing legion of Rudy supporters. If you’ll be there, drop me a line (email below) and let’s meet up.
Tagged: announcements 
cpac
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WhiteHouse.gov Reloaded
by Patrick Ruffini :: February 28th, 2007 10:19 pmThe White House has launched itself a new Web site. Congratulations to WH Internet guru David Almacy and his team for a job well done. I always thought the old site stood the test of time pretty well, but to get a sense of how old it was, just consider that it was still 600 pixels wide. Clearly a new design was in order.
For those of us toiling in the political vineyards, I will point out that the White House routinely kills all political sites in daily traffic. They’re where the action is. If my political sites got the kind of traffic they did, we probably wouldn’t have to do any grip-and-grin fundraisers anymore!
If that wasn’t good enough reason to check it out, this is: the new design is basking in blogosphere and Web 2.0 influences.
Tagged: david almacy online politics white house
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Fighting the Last War
by Patrick Ruffini :: February 27th, 2007 6:21 pmDavid All has a poll up. Which app will have the most impact in the 2008 Presidential election?
Right now, it’s 14 votes for GooTube and zero for everyone else.
That’s a “fighting the last war” mentality. Ask the pundits to predict what will work in the next election cycle and they’ll repeat what worked in the last one.
Which isn’t to say I have a better answer. I don’t. Online video is far from being mature yet. But assuming this cycle plays out like the last one, the killer app of 2008 hasn’t been invented yet. It will be invented in a garage in August of this year, start gaining critical mass by the end of the fourth quarter, and be on the tip of everyone’s tongue by the middle of next year. That’s not my inner Nostradamus speaking — that’s transposing YouTube’s growth trajectory in 2006.
Online video is here to stay, but YouTube, copyright challenges notwithstanding, has other issues to contend with. They can remain a player if they solve their getting-ridiculous lag time and publishers’ desire for hi-def online video.
Tagged: online politics video youtube
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A Sign Gore is Running?
by Patrick Ruffini :: February 26th, 2007 1:25 amIn the wake of his Oscar victory, he’s got a splash page up at AlGore.com collecting email addresses for a global warming petition.
This is my first time visiting Gore’s site that I’ve seen this page. The latest snapshot of the site from Alexa doesn’t include it, so the likelihood is that it was turned on fairly recently. Why is this significant?
Because it’s the kind of no-nonsense list-building effort that all candidates would be well-advised to engage in advance of announcing. A good e-mail list is something any candidate needs to hit the ground running. And if you’re smart, you capitalize on high-impact events like the Oscar win to collect e-mail addresses.
Gore may deflect by saying that the page is for issue advocacy only, but make no mistake: this database can be used by a future Gore campaign. He seems to be still keeping his options open.
Is Gore going anywhere? I’m not sure he is. Obama seems to have taken the wind out of his sails by removing the need for a “fresh face” from the Dem field and cornering the lefty-hipster vote. If Gore’s strategy is predicated on Obama peaking too soon, it may be the right one, but we may not know the answer to that question for months.
Tagged: al gore barack obama online politics strategy
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Pajamas Media Straw Poll
by Patrick Ruffini :: February 25th, 2007 9:01 pm Let’s see where we’re at… Tagged: straw poll
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V for Very Broke
by Patrick Ruffini :: February 24th, 2007 1:38 pmSomething has been nagging me about Tom Vilsack’s dropping out of the race, and though I get this is not the sexiest of topics, please indulge me. This has broader implications for how to run for President in a new media world.
The only reason Vilsack gave for dropping out of the race was money. He had recruited a series of top-notch operatives (Democrat celebrity-consultants tend to gravitate towards the long-sots more than do the Republicans). He had a staff of 50 in his Des Moines headquarters and was promoting the fact that he had racked up 3,000 “ones” in Iowa — which is short for a diehard vote at the Caucus.
Vilsack was running a top-heavy, traditional campaign when only untraditional campaigns get to go from single digits to 20-30 percent. His model was just wrong. His being from Iowa was also a no-win situation. Anything other than first in Iowa and he was out. If he gained any traction at all, Clinton and Obama would have withdrawn from the state, citing home field advantage and making the Caucuses meaningless. That’s what Bill Clinton did in ‘92 against Tom Harkin.
At this point in the game, Duncan Hunter having John Hawkins and Michael Illions on his side is more important than his having a political director. Why? Because at this point, a great ground game will get him from 1 to 2 percent — draining resources he doesn’t have. A great media operation on the other hand can keep an unknown candidate constantly on Fox News, on blogs, and tossing out buzz-worthy red meat to audiences of 50 and 100 at a time. Great buzz is how one breaks into double digits. And that’s when the efficiency-based gains from a great ground game can do you good.
If you’re at 1% in the polls, you have to prepared to do all of this for $5 million or less in 2007. If you can’t, you have no business running for President. Because the political marketplace just isn’t big enough to support your lofty $15-20 million fundraising goal. If and when lightning strikes, the money will be pouring in hand over fist online and in direct mail.
Tagged: iowa strategy tom vilsack
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Shhhh… The Surge is Working
by Patrick Ruffini :: February 24th, 2007 9:35 amMy first Townhall column looks at some early indicators that the Baghdad surge is yielding impressive returns. Enjoy.
Tagged: iraq
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Vilsack Drops Out
by Patrick Ruffini :: February 23rd, 2007 11:25 amTom Vilsack, the former Iowa governor, has dropped out of the race after three months.
It’s easy to ascribe this to the oxygen being sucked up by HillaryObamaEdwards. The incredibly early start to the campaign is a double-edged sword for the back of the pack. Their ability to raise fast money online if they catch on late in the season is a potentially game-changing opportunity. At the same time, conventional wisdom about who’s up and down is congealing earlier, creating potential cash-flow problems for a candidate like Vilsack, who had already hired 50 staffers in Iowa.
Tagged: iowa tom vilsack
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Campaigns Aren’t Conversations
by Patrick Ruffini :: February 20th, 2007 11:50 pm“Campaigns are conversations.” If I hear this one more time, I swear my head is going to explode. Campaign 2008 already has its most overused cliche, at least among us techie types.
“Let the conversation begin,” blares Hillary Clinton’s Web site. “Start the conversation,” says Chris Dodd’s. “This campaign is about YOU,” proclaims Barack Obama’s. Jeff Jarvis has a new blog on Presidential video dedicated to the Platonic ideal of campaigns as a neverending bull session with the voters.
Problem is, I don’t get the point of this exactly. At some level, this seems like no more than a basic transposition of Doc Searls’ “markets are conversations,” which is brilliant as applied to business because markets are inherently leaderless. It’s trickier to apply this pure and abstract ideal to politics where the voice of the people matters but where voters can and do evaluate candidates as leaders who stand on principle and don’t just do things because they’re popular.
On another level, I don’t see how any of this is new. The ideals of candidates listening to voters, answering questions, or holding town halls where even hostile questioners get their say isn’t exactly new. Politics in America has featured some element of conversation since right about the Boston Tea Party, and Iowa and New Hampshire living rooms are arguably pretty darn representative. Candidates who don’t have some sense of how to interact with regular people usually face prospects far worse than an unfavorable review on TechPresident. It’s called losing.
Candidates need to know how to converse. But they also need to know how to lead. They need to be able to stand on principle, even if that means telling everyone that they’re conversing with, “Sorry, but you’re wrong.” When America is under attack, I don’t want my President to have a conversation with me. I want him to lead.
Ronald Reagan, JFK, and FDR inspired the country with soaring rhetoric that belied the latter’s casual-sounding Fireside Chats. In the history books, they stand in marked contrast to conversational leaders like Bill Clinton, who wasn’t exactly known as a man of bold principle. Last November, I was on a panel with Robert Moran of StrategyOne, who remarked that Reagan would have made a great Internet candidate. I couldn’t agree more. Why? Because he genuinely inspired us. He came up from the people, not from Washington. And yet Reagan was the master of the set piece, not the conversation. His radio addresses that made him President and his greatest speeches once he got there were not the product of a conversation or a committee, but lonely brilliance jotted down on yellow legal pads.
In the age of new media, the worst thing someone can be guilty of is being inauthentic. That’s not exactly a new insight either, but the YouTubeization of politics amplifies a candidate’s past twists and contradictions many times over. That means you don’t have a “conversation” with someone that’s really a monologue. Most of Hillary Clinton’s invitations to “chat” are immediately followed by a fade to black. Faking a conversation is worse than not having one at all.
I’m involved in online politics because I think the Internet can help unpack the spin, get smart people involved who wouldn’t otherwise played a role, and show candidates as they really are, through a medium that’s truer and more expansive than 30-second ads or 8-second soundbites. The first rule of thumb governing all of this is don’t ever try and be something you’re not. If your candidate is a man of deep conviction with a clear sense of what they want to accomplish, don’t pretend they are going to lead by plebiscite and practice democracy by Web chat.
Don’t get me wrong here. I don’t think candidates should live in bunkers (because if you do, you lose). Blogs, wikis, social media, wisdom of crowds — all of that, I’m there. But at some point the conversation has to end and leadership has to start. I want candidates who are real, and tell me stuff I don’t already know — not just what I want to hear.
And that’s ultimately the road this new therapeutic, conversational culture is leading us down: getting candidates to bend to the prevailing winds and hence not being leaders at all.
Tagged: conversation hillary clinton online politics ronald reagan strategy
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How to Oppose Hillary
by Patrick Ruffini :: February 20th, 2007 9:03 amYesterday’s New York Times seems to be speaking in forked tongues on the subject of Hillary Clinton. On the one hand, her critics are more marginalized than ever. But don’t worry — those left behind are just as hate-filled as ever:
To judge by conservative talk radio, Mrs. Clinton appears to be the most reviled politician in the country. But others in the conservative movement say it is easy to be deceived by what is on the airwaves and by the marketing of anti-Clinton paraphernalia, books and movies. (Among items on sale at conservative Web sites: “No Way in Hellary” barbecue aprons; “Hillary Scares Me” baby onesies; and buttons that say simply “Hillary Hater.”)
For every conservative who says Mrs. Clinton will feel the wrath of the movement’s grass-roots organizers later in the campaign, particularly if she becomes her party’s nominee, another expresses doubt that Clinton foes can ever be revved up as they once were.
Some of her former antagonists say that terrorism and war have made the political battles of her husband’s administration — gay men and lesbians in the military, the White House travel office, Monica Lewinsky — seem remote, if not trivial.
And:
“She is the designated devil,” said David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, whose Conservative Political Action Conference next month in Washington will showcase assorted anti-Clinton T-shirts and gear.
So, the NYT stokes the flickering embers of “devil” Hillary “hatred,” never even considering that conservatives may have better reasons to reject Hillary Clinton, namely her full-on embrace of cut and run.
The only ones still stuck in the ’90s are the Clintons. Hillary is now campaigning openly for a retreat in the face of radical jihadists. That’s what matters today. Based on the waning of the conspiracy-minded Hillary-bashing of the ’90s, conservatives seem to get that.
Tagged: hillary clinton
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