In the closing stretch of the presidential campaign, both John McCain and Barack Obama have invoked the name of The Heritage Foundation to justify their policy proposals and attack their opponent. Unfortunately, neither campaign accurately reflected the views of Heritage. I’ve spent much of my time over the past week trying to set the record straight and protect our name.
Heritage is a nonprofit organization with strict limitations on political activity. As a nonpartisan research institution, we produce analysis on public policy issues, including the candidates’ tax proposals, but do not — and legally cannot — support or oppose a candidate for political office.
I thought it would be useful to share our approach this week responding to both McCain and Obama, particularly because we used the Internet and social media to tell our story. Our goal in each case was to set the record straight and clear up any confusion about the use of our name in their campaign materials. READ MORE »
Posted by: Alan Rosenblatt
I didn’t know I was running for president until I saw this new video from AARP. The truth is, AARP is launching a new election campaign that lets you put anyone’s name into their video as the candidate for president. Why? Because this election is all about YOU.
AARP’s new campaign is really about connecting with voters. The very essence of this video campaign is to give the people a chance to insert themselves into the message, and then insert their friends. Very personal touch, indeed.
While not the first to do something like this (Job Jab lets you put your face on an animated character), this light-hearted campaign really gets to the heart of electoral politics–YOU.
Want to send the ad to your friends with their name in it? Click here and have some fun.
A few weeks ago Billy Hallowell of VoterWatch pitched me on the idea of annotating video of the presidential debates. Due to a bunch of distractions at work, I missed the first two presidential contests and the VP debate. But this morning I fully annotated the third debate with commentary and links from The Heritage Foundation.
By embarking on the project — and possibly continuing it with congressional video — I hoped to provide an important service to our readers who want more than sound bites from the candidates. VoterWatch allows you to do just that by blogging within video coverage.
The experience was rather enjoyable. After watching last night’s “Saturday Night Live” skit with Fred Armisen and Darrell Hammond, I even had a few laughs at the real Barack Obama and John McCain.
Posted by: Alan Rosenblatt
In 2006, with less money and less name recognition than his opponent for Senate, incumbent Orrin Hatch, Pete Ashdown took an innovative approach to his campaign website. Harking back to a tradition of elected representatives being delegates of their constitutents will (rather than trustees), Ashdown included a wiki on his website where voters could edit and develop his campaign platform. This collaborative process, made easy by the web, foreshadowed a growing practice of letting large groups of citizens to collaborate on developing political messages and policy platforms.
But why should we let the crowd do this? According to James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds, large groups of people are simply smarter than small groups and individuals, on average. For example, Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann, in The Spiral of Silence, shows that long before asking people in surveys “who they will vote for” can effectively predict an upcoming election, asking them “who they think will win” will get the prediction right.
On Thursday, October 16, 2008, from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm at 1225 I (Eye) Street, NW, 3rd Floor, the Internet Advocacy Roundtable focuses on crowdsourcing message and policy platforms with a panel of speakers who have managed crowdsourcing programs and developed new software to make these programs more effective.
Speakers include Brian Young, who has been working with the TruthFightsBack.com project, which relies on citizens to help identify smears in the current presidential campaign; Michael Yaki, who crowdsourced language and ideas for the 2008 Democratics Party platform; and David Stern, co-founder of MixedInk, a startup that has created an online collaborative writing tool that allows large groups to weave their ideas together democratically to express a collective viewpoint.
The exciting thing about crowdsourcing’s impact on politics and governance is that it creates new opportunities to further democratize the process. As alluded to above, these tools allow elected officials to more effectively represent the will of their constituents, or as Edmund Burke wrote in the 1770’s, they can be delegates. This is in sharp contrast to elected officials who see themselves as trustees of their constituents. Trustees do what they think is best for their constituents, even if that is in opposition to their will. Delegates work to reflect their constituents’ will; a far more democratic approach.
Crossposted on Mediafuturenow.com.
My colleague Brad Fitch writes in the K Street Café about the bailout plan, “What’s Driving Citizen Outrage?”. Fitch takes a smart look at the factors underlying the passion, and recognizes a true “grassroots” advocacy campaign when he sees one. In fact, the bailout may be one of those seminal – and rare – political events where the citizenry is truly engaged in an uncoordinated explosion, and Fitch cites the 2006 immigration debate, the 1998 Starr Report and the 1989 Congressional pay raise as the only seriously comparable recent examples.
Wired magazine makes an analogous point in its coverage of the case, in “Online Bailout Outrage Jumps to Streets, and Into Lawmakers’ Inboxes”. It seems that the major advocacy groups organizing massive email, letter-writing and telephone campaigns are being eclipsed – at least this time around – by the virality of individual journalists and bloggers and websites launching often comical but all-too-effective pitched battles. As just one example, Wired mentions BuyMyShitPile.com, a parody site organizing collections of junk for submission to the government to also be redeemed in the junk mortgage bailout. (As of this writing, BuyMyShitePile claims stated value of its “junk” assets at $801,501,210,139.11.) READ MORE »
Congressional offices this past week reported getting swamped by emails and calls from constituents who are angry about the $700 billion bailout that Congress will vote on this week. Congress.org, which offers a free service allowing constituents to e-mail and write their Member of Congress, sent over 100,000 communications last week on the topic – one of the biggest turnouts for a topic in the last few years. But what is really driving that outrage? READ MORE »
It all started with a conversation.
A few months ago I was chatting with some colleagues about the lack of a comprehensive resource online for public affairs professionals to keep up to speed on with the latest trends, tactics and strategies in our industry. There are certainly plenty of resources for political pros on how technology is shaping campaigns and elections, but relatively few on how the Internet and social media is changing the way public policy is formed and shaped.
We called on some of the best and the brightest – practitioners and observers in the public affairs realm — who are known for staying on top of the major transformations taking place in our industry to engage in an ongoing dialogue about how the nature of advocacy is changing. It is essential that all of the stakeholder groups in the issue advocacy world are involved - so we invited representatives from associations, think tanks, corporate goverment affairs offices, interest groups, the media, and from some of the key industry organizations in Washington DC including the Congressional Management Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation.
The result is K Street Cafe - a collaborative blog made up of expert contributors who can provide context and analysis of the changing nature of advocacy, and the difference these changes make in the formation of public policy.
So you might ask - why the name K Street Cafe? Doesn’t K Street conjure up some of the negative images we have about how public policy is formed? Yes. But we intend this blog to be conversation about how K Street is changing - away from images of fat cats, smoke filled rooms and back room deals toward a K Street that is open, transparent and with a much broader participation from the public.
Of course, cafes have long been centers of spirited dialogue. We trust this blog will host vigorous conversations on a variety of subjects. And we hope you will join us in the conversation.
