Archive for: January, 2008

What Came First? The Music Or The Misery?

Jan 28 2008 Published by under Miscellany, Movies, Music, Pop Culture, Pop Music

Thought of the day from the opening scene of the movie High Fidelity:

What came first? The music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns and watching violent videos, we’re scared that some sort of culture of violence is taking them over. But nobody worries about kids listening to thousands — literally thousands — of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss.

Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable, or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

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Fred08.com: An Outside Insider’s View

Jan 24 2008 Published by under Bloggers, Candidates, Elections, News Media, Operatives, Politics, Republicans, The Internet

(cross-posted from TechPresident)

A lot has been written about the Thompson campaign in the past two days. I have read a bunch of post-mortems all focused on what went wrong, but I thought I would spend a little time telling you what went right. For people interested in online politics and the way candidates use the web, the Thompson campaign is a great case study in what can go well, and go badly in our world.

On May 22nd, I was sitting at Inova Fairfax hospital as my wife was rehydrated. A vicious stomach flu was circulating through the house and had brought my wife and son down. As we sat there that evening, I received an e-mail on my Blackberry from the brother of a friend of the Thompson’s. A few days earlier, they had seen an article in the Washington Post wherein I chastised my party for not using the Internet effectively.

I had been sweating the fallout from that article for two days. I was not exactly loved by the RNC for my critical assessment of their online operation. That article, which was about 180 degrees removed from the series of conversations I had with the reporter, was not going to help.

The Thompson team, however, agreed with my assessment that campaigns could use the Internet differently and wanted me to come out to “The House” to chat about it. We agreed to meet the next day despite what would become a full-blown case of the flu. The Thompson team, it seems, had circulated that same flu about a week earlier and none of them were afraid of catching it again.

On May 23rd, I met with Team Fred and after a three hour discussion of new and innovative ways you could use the Internet to supplement a traditional campaign, I left with an assignment – build a Presidential website in the height of a media storm, that would withstand a huge rush of traffic the moment it launched, and do it all in 10 days.

The Launch

On June 5, 2007, we launched ImWithFred.com. The site was originally envisioned as a simple splash page that would gather low hanging fruit – early donors and supporters looking to sign up. A requirement that all forms be pre-populated so visitors would not have to fill in information more than once threw in a wrinkle and we ended up building personalization into a splash page – not something most people would do. We also ended up building tools that would allow viral recruitment for both donors and volunteers.

Now these tools were hardly new or innovative, but the combination of designing the data architecture, doing the graphic design work, cutting up the site, coding it all, and allowing time to test for bugs in 10 days (over Memorial Day weekend, no less) was about the craziest thing I have ever tried. The data architecture alone had to support huge traffic, and getting the servers provisioned, hardened and tested would eat into our ability to deploy a test environment. Doing all of this over the holiday made me very popular with the development team.

Speaking of the team, I have to give credit to Dan Hopkins, Blaise Hazelwood, Todd Zeigler, Ken Smith, Brian Lyle and the gang that pulled this together. They did an outstanding job getting the site launched under those conditions and rarely complained (to me at least).

On Hannity and Colmes, Fred announced his website url and the flood came in. We took a lot of heat for the thin site, but we didn’t have time for much else. Had we had a month to design, build and test, we could have done more. Given the time we had, and the limitations of working under the “Testing the Waters” rules, I thought we did fine. We attracted over 100,000 unique visitors, raised over a quarter million dollars, and added nearly 30,000 names to our list in the first 24 hours.

On June 12, we rolled out the Fred File, added Fred’s bio, and added tools to spread the word through traditional media by contacting talk radio and newspapers. I was traveling back from a meeting in Colorado that night on a flight that was seriously delayed. I ended up doing the go-live countdown from a seat just inside the arrival gate at Dulles airport on their wi-fi connection. We made the rollout about 30 minutes ahead of Fred’s appearance on Leno that night.

The blog was a hit almost instantly and led me to believe the path we had chosen was right. Fred’s commentaries were getting a lot of comments and I saw the beginning of an online community I’ve never seen around a GOP candidate’s online operation. What’s more, nobody wrote a single word about what supporters were saying online. Nobody accused us of endorsing the random beliefs espoused by the occasional nut, and nobody on the campaign had to answer a single press call (that I am aware of) about the blog or anything said on it.

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Back in the Swing of Things

Jan 24 2008 Published by under Miscellany

Before I began advising Thompson’s campaign and imposed a degree of radio silence on myself, I had spent a lot of time sharing my thoughts on the absurdity of our culture, our political system, and even my own taste in movies and music. I spent a lot of time chatting about the ways campaigns are using the Internet and critiquing their efforts. In some instances, I have even been known to go off on a rant about the GOP and its recent search for a soul.

Prior to joining the Thompson team, I had posted 707 posts in about 18 months. Much of it was blather, I’ll admit. But I like to think there was the occasional nugget of what might pass for wisdom. At the very least, having an outlet for me to share my frustration kept me from ending up as a story on the nightly news. In the 8 months I have been assisting the campaign, I have added another 70 posts, but have felt a void because I have felt the need to hold back and not take a good hard stare at the election and share my thoughts.

Well, the silence is now broken. I have worked through the five stages of grief over Thompson’s withdrawal and said my piece about that. The gloves are coming off, and over the next 9 1/2 months, it’s on. I’m back and more than ready to rumble. Whoever the GOP nominee may be, I’ll be calling them out when they violate the principles of Federalism on which our party was built.

I’m also, however, looking forward to helping strip the hide off of whatever nominee the Dems throw at us (my bet is still on Obama, but we can always hope for a nice floor fight).

For the six visitors who have stuck with me threw the lean times, let’s do this thing. For any new folks who stumble upon my little corner of the Net. Welcome. Settle in, have a drink, and get ready to rock.

4 responses so far

The Real Mike Huckabee

Jan 23 2008 Published by under Candidates, Politics, Republicans

From Rich Galen’s Mullings:

  • Thompson never got more than 16 percent of the votes in any of the primaries or caucuses, so his endorsement would not seem to be crucial to any of the remaining candidates. Nevertheless, two of them were gracious in their comments.
  • According to Associated Press reporters Dave Espo and Liz Sidoti, John McCain said:

    “Fred Thompson ran an honorable campaign. He and I will remain close friends, and I wish him and his family the best.”

  • Mitt Romney responded to the news of Thompson’s exit:

    “Throughout this campaign, Fred Thompson brought a laudable focus to the challenges confronting our country and the solutions necessary to meet them. He stood for strong conservative ideas and believed strongly in the need to keep our conservative coalition together.”

  • Mike Huckabee, on the other hand, whined that Thompson should have gotten out of the race before South Carolina because “the votes that he took essentially were votes that I would have most likely had.”

    • That should tell you everything you need to know. If the “Oops, I didn’t mean to slander Mormonism,” and “Golly, that does look like a cross” BS didn’t tell you what a dirtbag this guy is, or how low he plays, that sums it up.

    Despite my belief that we are left with a terribly weak field, I now have a new favorite – anybody but Huckabee.

    One response so far

    Good Luck, GOP. See you in 2012.

    Jan 22 2008 Published by under Barack Obama, Candidates, Craziness, Democrats, Elections, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Pandering, Politics, Republicans

    As a lot of people chatter about the departure of Fred Thompson from the race, I’m sitting here thinking about the last 9 months and wondering how I can ever look my party in the face again. For that matter, I don’t see how I can look my fellow voters in the face. Fred Thompson ran the race we all claim we want to see. For that, he got disparaging remarks about his vigor, his ambition, his wife, and his personal appearance.

    It really is sad. We claim we want a candidate to talk seriously about the issues, to put forth bold policy proposals and debate on the merits of his plan. In a race crowded with style, Fred was all substance. Yet the people looked away.

    In a campaign marked by cat-fights between candidates constantly engaging in underhanded digs at others’ religion, age, and life story, Fred took the high road and stuck to records, and policy. With debates that more closely resembled a three ring circus of 30 second sound bites, Fred stood, hands down, taller than the rest and demanded a little dignity.

    The one “failing” of Fred Thompson seems to have been the fact that he refused to be treated like some retarded, inbred poodle jumping through every hoop the media threw in front of him.

    When he built and unveiled his Internet presence, the media panned his effort with calls that he ‘plans to run his whole show online.’

    When he and Jeri appeared in public, the media savaged his wife as a gold-digger, an interloper in the First Lady sweepstakes, and as a micromanaging puppet master working the strings of the campaign.

    When he chose to spend time with his family, the media called him lazy, disinterested, and uncommitted.

    Yet that lazy, uncommitted, disinterested candidate was the only one in the race saying something that mattered. He was the only one talking in complete sentences about the issues our nation faces. He was putting forth plans that got noticed by economists and experts as being serious and substantive. He was the only one demanding an end to the pageantry and a beginning to a new era of serious policy based campaigns. He was the only one that made it through the debates with his honesty and integrity in check.

    It was, in short, exactly the kind of race we claim we want. He was, by placing his priorities on his family and not the sideshow, exactly the candidate we claim we want.

    Yet once we got the campaign we’ve asked for, and once we got the candidate we asked for, he was labeled ‘lazy’ and ‘not serious’.

    Well, at this point, all I can say to America is congratulations. You will get the President you deserve. You can pick from 32 flavors of vanilla. You can pick from the 6 remaining monkeys who are rabid enough in their pursuit of self-glorification that they will dance as you grind your organ. You can hold your nose and cast a ballot for candidates that perpetuate this ridiculous system we have created.

    As for me, I’ll be sitting out the Presidential election this year. I am unable to find anything in the remaining candidates on either side that gives me hope at a time when we really need it. I’ll sit and ponder the death of statesmanship knowing that our American Idol obsessed culture has taken another step away from electing leaders and another step down the road of electing entertainers.

    At this point I don’t see why you don’t chuck it all and simply let the winner of Bruno and Carrie’s Dance War run our nation for the next four years. I’ll bet they dance to your music better than any of the candidates you have left.

    6 responses so far

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