To Blog Or Not To Blog, That Is The Question

I get a lot of questions from friends in politics asking whether their candidates should blog or not. It always reminds me of a scene from Joe Versus the Volcano.

MARSHALL
Where would you like to go shopping?

JOE
I don’t know.
…
MARSHALL
What do you need?

JOE
Clothes.

MARSHALL
What kind of clothes? What is your taste?

JOE
I don’t exactly know.
…
MARSHALL
I’m just hired to drive the car, mister. I’m not here to tell you who you are.

JOE
I didn’t ask you to tell me who I am.

MARSHALL
You were hinting around about clothes. It happens that clothes are very important to me, Mister, uh…

JOE
Banks.

MARSHALL
Mr. Banks, clothes make the man. I believe that. You say to me you wanna go shopping, you wanna buy clothes, but you don’t know what kind. You leave that hanging in the air, like I’m going to fill in the blank, that to me is like asking me who you are, and I don’t know who you are, I don’t wanna know. It’s taken me my whole life to find out who I am and I’m tired now.

Asking if your candidate should blog is just like that. You’re really asking me to tell you who your candidate is, what he stands for, what his strengths and weaknesses are, and what his strategy is. All of those things should weigh heavily into a decision to include a blog. Some candidates do, some don’t. Some definitely should, some absolutely shouldn’t.

To help candidates answer that question, I put together a column over at the Personal Democracy Forum. I hope it helps if you’re helping a candidate find out who he is.

Share

Tags