It’s not clear if this was an attempt to be satirical or an attempt to make fun of President Bush’s now infamous “Political Capital” speech, but the strangest e-mail I’ve received in a while came to me today from Unity08.

Dear Michael,

Wow! The response to our new web site has been fantastic! Many of you have sent us compliments and excellent feedback on how to make it even better! Thank you!

If you’ve discovered “Political Capital” points then you are ahead of the game. If not, then you should start earning them now! Political Capital allows members to earn points by being active on the site and in the real world. On the site, you gain Political Capital by ranking the issues, inviting others to the movement, and participating in groups. In the real world, you gain Political Capital by attending meetings. As we continue to build the site there will be more ways to earn and use your Political Capital.

The last guy that talked about spending the political capital he acquired is still trying to live it down. To be sure, in the 48 hours after an election, it was a great “In your face!” moment. However, it cost him dearly when he discovered during the Social Security fight that it’s much easier to raise political capital than it is to spend it.

If you’re an upstart political movement hoping to draw attention to a fusion ticket and have trouble getting big name politicos to jump on board, what do you do? You can do what Unity08 has done and get celebrities to make the pitch.

Sam Waterston, the star of NBC’s Law and Order, has drafted a little note encouraging interest in the effort to elect a moderate ticket made of one Democrat and one Republican.

In the interest of full disclosure, I serve on the Rules Committee for Unity08. I offered to do so because I find this to be an interesting political experiment. Honestly, I’m not sure how relevant this is going to be now that we have a split government. I think moderation can be achieved in one of two ways. Unity08 was one of those, but the other is the tried and truth method of divided government.

Now that the Democrats have reclaimed the control of Congress, our government can go one of two directions – compromise and cooperation or total, chaotic gridlock. I hope for the former, but I suspect we’ll probably get the latter. Either may render the Unity effort mute moot (thanks to Divided We Stand United We Fall for cathing that one…).

If they’re able to get more celeb endorsements and encourage more people outside the political realm – but in the public sphere – to speak up, they may be able to get a lot of attention if Congress starts drifting toward inaction.

I stumbled upon a Libertarian blog’s reaction to Unity08. It took the tack I would expect it to take – that being you should not support U08, but join the Libertarians instead. In doing so, they really miss the point.

Their general theme seems to be that Unity 08 does not have a clear agenda. That largely stems from the fact that Unity08 is relying on the supporters to supply the agenda. It is an ambiguous agenda because the specifics have not yet been written. This will be the first ticket for President that is entirely derived from the people, rather than a controlling few.

I have seen firsthand the way the GOP manages their platform process at the federal and the state level. The platform is written by a very select few, rammed through a largely compliant platform committee with little chance that there will be significant changes, and presented as a grand vision to the supplicants who are told that it’s ok to disagree, as long as you keep pushing the button.

Like Skinner’s rats, we keep hoping to get the feed pellet, but it never happens. Instead, the party apparatchiks continue to be spun by a relative small number of people who rarely leave DC and wouldn’t recognize real America if it walked up and bit them on the ass.

That is no way to run a political party in a country that is by, for, and of the American people. Urging people to prostrate themselves before party leaders who know full well their only interest lies in keeping their job and lining their own pockets is no way to change the world for the better.

The promise of Unity08 is that the people control the agenda. The people control the ticket. The people can write the platform or shape the agenda through action, rather than through inaction.

So I posted the other day that Unity08 didn’t have any bugs for supporters to include on their site. I had made my own, but then noticed in my referral log that a page on their site was driving people my way. A quick click and I discovered not only had they made some, but they even gave me kudos for pointing out the faux pas.

Talk about responsiveness. My initial fears about their blog outreach appear to have been unfounded… Rock on guys.

Unity08 launched this morning – as promised. It’s actually not a bad offering. The action center looks frighteningly similar to the GOP.com action center and the BC04 action center – so those of us involved in either should feel flattered.

Judging by Nicco Mele’s place on the Founder’s Council, I suspect he had a hand in putting this together. I find that odd given his prominent role in the Dean campaign in 04, but I hear he’s now advising McCain, so I suspect his support for the liberal Dean was based more on his outsider status than his ideology.

The site isn’t bad. It has a couple of technical problems and makes a couple of strategic mistakes.

First, the contact page is a mess. The comment field is 19 characters wide by 2 high. That’s atrocious. Leaving a comment is a horrible experience. It’s made worse by the fact that you are limited to 250 characters.

On the strategic side, they have limited your options for showing support to giving them money, or e-mailing friends. It would be very easy to create a graphic bug that supporters could place on their site and help advance the agenda.

I have a lot of friends in the political internet realm and none of them had heard of this effort. That’s evidence that their blog outreach strategy is failing before it got started. They should have amassed a database of moderate bloggers and had them pumping up the launch. As it is, Technorati lists 15 posts that mention Unity 08 and two of those are me. I’m 15% of their effort thus far.

Oh well, I guess I’ll create my own bug. Look for it later today. If you want it, feel free to grab it.

UPDATE: I got the bug together and it’s in the top right corner. If you’d like to grab it, right click here and save for a gif, or right click here and save for a png file.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Mad props (wow! I feel so gangsta) to Anne “Her Magnificence” Champlin for pointing the Unity08 effort out to me. She is truly one in a million. A diamond in a see of rhinestones. You are the cat’s PJs, Mrs. C. Rock on!