The New Road to the White House

[Eloriel]

The first Open Source, Iterative Presidential Campaign in History --


The New Road to the White House
http://blog.deanforamerica.com/archives/001882.html
Lawrence Lessig contemplates how blogs are transforming politics over at Wired: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/view.html?pg=5

When they write the account of the 2004 campaign, it will include at least one word that has never appeared in any presidential history: blog. Whether or not it elects the next president, the blog may be the first innovation from the Internet to make a real difference in election politics....
he blog, a space where people gab. As implemented by most campaigns, it is a place where candidates gab down to the people.

But when done right, as the Howard Dean campaign apparently is doing, the blog is a tool for building community. The trick is to turn the audience into the speaker. A well-structured blog inspires both reading and writing. And by getting the audience to type, candidates get the audience committed. Engagement replaces reception, which in turn leads to real space action. The life of the Dean campaign on the Internet is not really life on the Internet. It's the activity in real space that the Internet inspires....

This is just what traditional politics would never allow. As Trippi explained, "This is my seventh presidential campaign. In all of them, everything I learned was that you're supposed to have strong military command over everything in the organization. You give commands to your state directors, who give it to the county directors, who order the precinct captains around."

But in the world of politics, the best theory is what works. And the lesson of the Dean campaign so far is that community can't be broadcast. It gets built not from slick commercials squeezed onto a Web page, but from tools that enable, and thus inspire, hundreds of thousands of people to something that American politics has not seen in many years: hundreds of thousands of people actually doing something.

more

And THIS is why I support Howard Dean and won't settle for less. It's a revolution in democracy and the democratic process. It really IS about taking the country back -- The People taking the country back, not the politicians, not special interests.

Eloriel

[PeakOil2008]

1. If Dean wins, his victory may cast serious doubt on financial fundraising

...as a candidate's primary vehicle to the Whitehouse. Dean's entire campaign is a return to the grassroots level. It's the PEOPLE at the grassroots who are giving Dean the edge over the other Democratic candidates.

At any rate, I'm starting to take a serious interest in this guy.