John McCain: Tolstoy in My Inbox
by Patrick Ruffini :: May 15th, 2008 11:20 pmToday, I sat in on my first McCain blogger conference call and cheered as McCain promised to continue these sessions on a biweekly basis as President. (Contrast with Barack Obama, whose netroots coordinator left in frustration at Obama’s refusal to be similarly accessible.) And this comes on top of weekly press conferences, and submitting to questions in the well of the House a la the British Prime Minister. McCain could become the most transparent and cross-examined President in history.
Online, it seems to be a different story, at least when it comes the image of John McCain as projected on JohnMcCain.com and in the daily emails that go out under his name. Good online strategy is simple: reflect the very best of your candidate offline. John McCain offline is transparent, accessible, and willing to answer any question. John McCain online is stilted and awkwardly asking me for money. There’s a fundamental disconnect.
The email the McCain camp sent today illustrates the problem. I’m deliberately zooming out because I don’t want you to focus on the copy:
These are recent emails sent by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton:
Even from a distance, it’s night and day. You’ve got brevity and short, rapid-fire paragraphs. They feature a clear call to action above the fold. They’re highly readable, or more to the point, scannable – since the average reader online reads no more than 20% of content. They respect today’s attention-deprived user. Less is more.
Most important is what these messages say about the candidate. These messages were crafted solely for the e-mail channel. I don’t know about you, but the e-mails I get everyday from friends and colleagues look a lot more like Hillary and Barack’s e-mails than they do War and Peace. I’ve even entertained the thought of Obama banging out a few pithy sentences on the MacBook Pro in the hotel suite on the way to the victory party (it’s believable enough). I know that he didn’t, but the fact that I’ve wondered counts for something.
McCain’s e-mail start off with the anachronistic “From the Desk of John McCain” — a 1970s-era direct mail device I haven’t seen on a piece of real stationery in a decade. The haughty phrasing is designed to evoke a sense of prestige — the sense that the person addressing you is Big and Important. But the Internet is not about being Big and Important. It’s about being One of Us. Again: fundamental disconnect. McCain offline gets this, shedding the trappings of the Imperial Presidency. McCain online, not so much.
But that concern pales in comparison to the content. Today’s e-mail, in marked contrast to the short, e-mail-like e-mails from Hillary and Barack, is lifted from speech text. In that he spoke the words, it is him. But it’s not him communicating something unique for the online audience. It’s him or his handlers keeping us at a safe distance using the most formal version of McCain possible – again, the polar opposite of what McCain’s offline strategy is about.
The explanation for why this is actually very prosaic: the approval process. In a short-staffed campaign, the easiest — and sometimes the only — option is to lift from already approved text. Nobody has the time to spend up to 24 hours getting all new text approved by McCain or his closest advisers, by which time the window of opportunity may have passed. And McCain’s signature nets more money than Rick Davis’s, no matter how you word the message. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
In the moment, it all makes sense. The problem is that over time, you wind up cheapening McCain’s personal brand. Maybe I’m being a Steve Jobs-like pie-in-the-sky perfectionist here, but having to play along with the illusion that John McCain sat down at his desk to deliver us gobs of text is demeaning both to us and to McCain. This is not direct mail. We are not some people data-mined off a consumer list who’ve never heard from you before. We opted-in. We are the top 1% — the savviest, most interested, most influential supporters. We get the joke. On the flip side, consider how much Hillary and Obama get simply by seeming real in their e-mails, even if they don’t get to cram in as many policy points.
This may all seem very esoteric, but it’s important. The pixels you see in the Hillary and Barack e-mails fueled the rise of the biggest people-powered fundraising machine in history. It’s worth studying how they do things at a very minute level.
Improvement starts by smashing the desk — and giving us the real McCain.
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I wonder how soon Patrick will realize that there is not future trying to be an internet guru for a political party that is in a death spiral.
My guess is that sometime in 2009, Patrick will start writing about how the Republican Party has left him and that he feels more comfortable with the Democratic Party. Since Patrick has shown zero interest in issues, the ability of elected leaders, or outcomes of decisions, the switch should be easy.
In the end, Patrick will probably feel better peddling internet gimmicks to Democrats than trying the Repubicans dig out from a total collapse since the Republican Party need to do many things before internet gimmicks become important.
Which real McBush is that? The one who called Jerry Falwell and agent of intolerance, or the one who cozied up to him later on? I could continue, but I think I’ve made my point: there is no real John McCain.
It’s a struggle to convince many people that emails should be short, sweet, and well linked.
But you hit the nail on the head, if you have their email in the first place, they’re in to you. They trust you and your brand (or are too lazy to opt out).
No need to re-state history from the dawn of man. Keep it action oriented.
@superdetroyer the same could’ve been said about us a few years ago. don’t be a sore winner.
Telling post Patrick, well said, and elegantly constructed so that we would not be distracted by the presented documents.
Correspondent Destroyer misses the point, in the context of politics, how you sell the message is just as important than the actual message. In McCain’s case, saddled by Bush and ideology, it is critical.
That said, let me point out that President McCain would be a disaster, and the final nail in the coffin of the Republican “Brand”.
Time to upgrade your blog roll: Captain’s Quarters is defunct, Giuliani 2008 is dead meat. I would add Outside the Beltway, time to show that there are some conservatives who actually think.
He’s beyond 70 and still discovers human nature. I read my classic in my 20s. Today’s it’s about understanding the Middle East and China.
Tolstoy is arguably the worlds greatest and his War and Peace is a magnificent canvass of the abyss of war with tragedy for all society involved. It should make anybody be wary of the utter destruction. McCain probably uses Tolstoy to justify his 100 years of war, which is a complete misinterpretation.
Tolstoy was one of the few persons to accurately predict the outcome of the Russian revolution. Having a commander in chief reading up on the history of war is not impressive. It’s like arguing with a libertarian that still hasn’t gotten over Ayn Rand or Robert Noczik.
If you want to quibble about trivialities, then Fast Barry is the candidate for you; you are interested obviously in style over substance. You must have liked the “hey sweetie - i’ll get back ta ya,” and then never did Fast Barry approach.
hahahahahahahahaha
Yeah, change the wording of the press releases. That’ll fix it!
Some trolls (too many for my taste) and some useful feedback. Any internet site has to have current content and relevant links. It isn’t easy but it has to be done, otherwise there is no traffic.
Clinton takes Indiana by a ‘razor’ and Obama wins North Carolina by a huge margin. Nevertheless, Kentucky, Montana and West Virginia are still to come.
The Democratic race for nomination is still very much alive – and most likely to be decided by superdelegates
If you’re tired of waiting around for those super delegates to make a decision already, go to LobbyDelegates.com and push them to support Clinton or Obama
If you haven’t done so yet, please write a message to each of your state’s superdelegates at http://www.lobbydelegates.com
Obama Supporters:
Sending a note to current Obama supporters lets them know it’s appreciated, sending a note to current Clinton supporters can hopefully sway them to change their vote to Obama, and sending a note to the uncommitted folks will hopefully sway them to vote for Obama. It’s that easy…
Clinton Supporters too …. !
It takes a moment, but what’s a few minutes now worth to get Clinton in office?! Those are really worth !
Sending a note to current Clinton supporters lets them know it’s appreciated, sending a note to current Obama supporters can hopefully sway them to change their vote to Clinton, and sending a note to the uncommitted folks will hopefully sway them to vote for Clinton. It’s that easy…
[…] John McCain: Tolstoy in My Inbox - Patrick Ruffini, PatrickRuffini.com McCain’s e-mail start off with the anachronistic “From the Desk of John McCain”—a 1970s-era direct mail device I haven’t seen on a piece of real stationery in a decade. […]
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