This is a follow up from my previous post about campaigns not giving us the power. As many of you suggested in the comments thread, we should seize it ourselves, like Steve Wilmarth has. However, I'm not done trying to puzzle out why I think most of the campaigns have communicated to me--and apparently several others--that we don't have the power.

It's never a technical matter, it's always more in the DNA of the campaign (and therefore this is not an accusation against the internet teams, but against the culture of the campaigns). That said, I think there may be some more technical clues that distinguish campaigns in which you have the power and campaigns in which you don’t. Here are three of mine, and I’d like to hear yours.

You probably have the power when:

(1) The campaign provides complete information

The basics of good candidate information include: what has she has done in her life, where she is getting her money, how she is spending her time, and what her political resume looks like. Luckily, this information is easy to gather. This should represent the baseline of a campaign in which you have the power:

(a) A good, rich bio, including professional ties
(b) News reports about that day, with some context
(c) A full online, easily downloadable FEC report filed on the candidates’ site (preferably closer to real time)
(d) A daily calendar (see, e.g., http://castor.house.gov/Events/)--we should know how they spend their time.
(e) All past votes

Much of this information can be found online already, so hiding it from citizens is just evidence of fear. If there's a vote that needs explaining, explain it. As for the daily calendar, the President will have to share it, so the candidates should--it will give us the tools we need to know who you meet with and talk with who might influence you. It will allow you to invite us into the difficult decisions related to fundraising.

On issues, candidates who think having an “issues” section of the website is enough are wrong. People are rightly skeptical of general pronouncements about “energy independence” and “keeping Iran from building nuclear weapons.” We learn about candidates through how they handle issues in time, as problems arise, and through conflict. You don’t have the power if issues sections tend to read like Match.com profiles, an interchangeable set of “easy to be around, likes hiking and dogs, cooking with friends.” You do if they include recent news, votes, and comparisons with other candidates.

The second part of good information is not lying about relative position or anything else. This may seem obvious, but cheer leading is an awfully common phenomenon on the campaigns websites, past the point of adult logic. Its one thing to speak with optimism, its another to sputter with it, excited about every new poll because they are all good. The latter is condescending, and won't work. If you never hear bad campaign news on a website, its evidence that you don't have the power.

(2) The campaign makes genuine requests for help

People—supporters—enter the campaign at a different moment when they have the power. In a campaign where supporters have power, they enter whenever a problem arises. When the staff doesn’t know something (“how many children don’t have dental care in New Hampshire?”), they automatically think about asking supporters. They express an entrenched attitude in which the supporters are an extension of the staff—much is demanded, and much is expected.
In a campaign with distributed tasks, instead of distributed power, people enter after the problem of figuring out what to do with all their energy has been largely answered.

On a campaign where supporters have power, you see a greater variety of requests for help, and real questions, where the poser of the question does not know the answer. On a campaign where you don’t have the power, you see *only* requests for already defined tasks, and questions posed where the answer is already known.

(3) The campaign encourages small, persistent, local groups

In a campaign where supporters have the power, the campaign encourages small, local groups with persistent organizations and decision-making power. They treat these groups like extensions of the campaign—authority is delegated, but so is responsibility. Groups should be 12-40 people—anything more and it becomes less like a decision-making body and more like a crowd. Research by Frank Bryan (Real Democracy) and Sidney Verba (cross-country study of civic society) shows that people experience power, and are more likely to intelligently participate (without split infinitives) if the pool of other participants is relatively small and persistent.

Offline groups tend to be very conservative—far more so than individual supporters, or online groups—and small groups tend to work hard and efficiently, as the combination of social pressures and social rewards lead to intensely creative ideas. Small groups given tasks like “win your district” will happily gather all the information they can from a central campaign, but then work to apply it to the idiosyncrasies of their districts.

A campaign that doesn’t have the power will rely heavily on rallies and big events, or on an Amway-like model, where tasks are beautifully distributed, but single groups do not meet repeatedly and take on strategic roles.

***

I rode the Iowa bus in 2004, and was shocked to hear the press whine about cold showers and bad food. “If you can’t organize a bus tour,” I heard from more than one reporter, “you probably can’t run the country.” Not wanting a bus tour operator, this struck me as nonsense. (As one of the cameramen told me, “I wish the major papers would send people on the road who didn’t care about hot showers.”)

However, when it comes to power, there might be something true here. If you can’t manage, and live with, some degree of chaos, and some loss of control, you have no business as a global leader, let alone a leader of our country.

Three years from now, whatever candidate wins is going to want a true grassroots—an intelligent, active, clustered order—to help do the hard political work of the country. And he or she is going to need to be very comfortable with uncertainty, lack of control, and several billion autonomous people.

What are other clues that you have the power (or don't)?