Is John McCain actually starting to "get it?" I would argue so. At least the evidence is starting to look that way.

Let's dig in...

First and foremost, McCain's actual web operation still isn't firing on all pistons. It has a few gaffes that the community is pointing out, and they seem to move quick to fix the issue, (sorta).

I say sorta because as compared to say Barack Obama, well there still is no comparison. They still need some basic tools: A real blog, RSS feeds, less "shiny," ditch the annoying splash page, more content, etc. But hopefully that'll change once they find out that being in the pool is better than watching everyone else swimming around, splashing each other, and doing cannon balls off the high-dive.

But they are trying...

For example

On February 6, McCain's senior staff jumped on a conference call with conservative bloggers (I live-blogged it). The general feeling after reading the posts from my colleagues on the call was that this was a "good first step" in to repairing the relationship between conservatives and Team McCain.

And just yesterday, John McCain himself jumped on a conference call with a large contingency of bloggers (again, I live-blogged it).

Conn Carroll over at National Journal's blogometer wrote a solid, though snarky, summary of the coverage McCain received:

In a definite change of pace from typical conservative blogging on John McCain, the AZ senator came off as funny, engaged, and insightful to those on a 3/28 blogger conf. call. McCain followed up the charm offensive with an online petition called Surrender Is Not an Option, reminding bloggers: "Success or failure in Iraq is the transcendent issue for our foreign policy and our national security." This is exactly the way the vast majority of conservative bloggers feel about the issue that is most important to them (one was moved to compare McCain to Lincoln). If GOP bloggers continue their whack-a-mole approach to frontrunners, might they all just fall in line for McCain in the end?

But as Conn noted (and I emphasized), the most important aspect of McCain's jump in to the pool wasn't the fact that he was the first GOP candidate to hold such a mass-conference call with bloggers, but that his team followed it up effectively. This shows an unparalleled understanding of how bloggers operate and a nice intersection between the candidate, the staff, the vendor, and the blogging consultant.

The best example of how this all played out is James Joyner's post at Outside The Beltway.

Joyner digs in with his thoughts on the call, and then updates the post with a link to the online petition with an accompanying YouTube video.

Was this strategy effective? Well, it's clear to me that the goal of this engagement was two-fold.

First, McCain truly wants to start a cordial relationship with conservative bloggers, including those that are actively promoting other candidates. In fact, he said as much in closing the call, "Well look folks, I’m sorry but I have to go. I think next time we need a full-hour to discuss all of the issues and I’ll tell my staff to start scheduling these on a regular basis so that you all can start planning on them." Bingo! Count me in.

Second, the team thought out their strategy, knew that people would write something, and used that energy and real estate to drive people back to their online petition - which is a really cute and effective way to add activists to their donor email blasts that would likely have never thought about signing up for Team McCain. I don't have any internal figures, but the message of the petition is consistent with how conservative activists feel about the situation.

Conclusion

McCain's Straight-Talk Express has already come a long way, and it still has a long way to go. But his team's efforts over the past few months with regard to their engagement of the conservative 'sphere has been thoughtful and effective.

And the fact that he's willing to keep on chugging up an uphill mountain will likely pay off in the end.

I'll scoop out a helping of porridge for that.