Speeches!

Why our political speeches sound like they do...

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Good Blog

Advice for making a good blog.

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Biden & Blogging

I was on MSNBC this afternoon with Peter Slutsky, talking about the Biden pick -- as well as about blogging the presidential race ...

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Obama Uses Text Messages to Collect Your Digits...

The NYT reports on Barack Obama's shrewd campaign to collect your phone number:

"Last week, the Obama campaign said that anyone who sent a text message of "VP" to a dedicated phone number would be among the first to learn the identity of his running mate. The campaign has also run a television commercial that offers a campaign sticker to any person who sends the word "Barack" to the same number.

The efforts spotlight Mr. Obama’s push to harvest millions of cellphone numbers of potential voters through text messaging, a technology that is increasingly moving into the mainstream. And it could have a significant effect in November, when the campaign plans to use the technology to get out the vote."

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Celebrity Ad Helped Raise McCain's Coverage

According to Pew Research:

"For the first time since this general election campaign began in early June, Republican John McCain attracted virtually as much media attention as his Democratic rival last week."

Check out the graphs ...

I think the lesson to learn here is that interesting or controversial ads grab attention. And if you're facing a more glamorous opponent, you can compensate by creating more interesting ads ...

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Bill Clinton on Obama ...

I was on the Live Desk yesterday, talking about Bill Clinton's comments regarding Barack Obama ...

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Obama's Logo

Some interesting thoughts about the similarity between Obama's logo and logos of organic products.

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BC'04 Team Studied Clinton War Room

As a fan of the Clinton documentary "The War Room," I'm not surprised to read this from TNR:

"We were Clinton-philes," says Nicolle Wallace, the former White House communications director who hired Schmidt to run rapid response for the Bush-Cheney campaign in '04. "On the first day I had that job, I played The War Room. We were huge fans of what [the Clinton team] did in '92, and we specifically tried to emulate and improve upon it in 2004." Wallace credits James Carville--known to his troops at the time as the "field marshal"--along with Paul Begala and George Stephanopoulos with "creating this whole movement of rapid response. They never complained about their coverage; they were never the victim of it. And I think that was a hallmark of '04--we drove the debate, and we were on the offense."

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Stolen Yard Signs?

Here's a solution.

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Let the Media Spread Your Message ...

Don't have enough money to run as many TV ads as you'd like to?

... One possible way to get your message out is to create a controversial ad -- and then let the media spread it around.

That seems to be what John McCain's campaign is doing right now. Today's NYT story, titled: "With Commercial, McCain Gets Much More Than His Money's Worth" highlights how the McCain team has pulled this off:

"Result for Mr. McCain: a public relations coup that allowed him to show his toughest campaign advertisement of the year -- one widely panned as misleading -- to millions of people, largely free, through television news media hungry for political news with arresting visual imagery.

Political campaigns have for years sought to broadcast their ads free by making them intriguing enough to draw wide coverage from news outlets.

And Mr. McCain’s campaign has proved particularly adept at getting such free air time in recent weeks, as news stations endlessly repeat the advertisements, which feature provocative visuals that can fill time during a relative lull in the campaign season."

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