Thanks for this post. In fact, I had the similar thoughts after reading Thompson's blog for the first time today, drawn to it by the Giuliani Guns kerfuffle.

The only example of similar authentic blogging by a candidate I can think of is when Dean liveblogged on Blog for America while eating a turkey sandwich for lunch (complete with a picture of Dean eating that sandwich at his desk). But that was a rare occurence for even that campaign, and Thompson has taken it to a much higher level.

I've written blog posts for candidates, so you are right to a certain extent. However, I have to say that both candidates told me in advance what their position was, and approved or changed the posts before they went up. For the record, the candidates were Jerry McNerney and Christine Cegelis. They appeared on the campaign blog, as well as on public sites like DailyKos.

Having said that, I'd also like to agree with the first comment. Howard Dean did live blog--and more than once. I was on a live chat with him one other time, and I heard about others. I also read a few posts. The Dean blog was also rather unusual in that supporters actually used it as an organization and communication tool. I knew one woman who only read the comments because she said she found out what other supporters were doing around the country. I also know for a fact that the campaign manager, Joe Trippi, read the thing all the time to find out the same thing. I believe Eden James still does that for the McNerney blog too.

The DFA blog became far less interesting to me, however, once DFA started restricting who could post on the blog. It cut out all that interesting and energizing communication, and with it the sense that this was a tool to empower supporters.

IMHO, that's the problem with most campaign blogs (and most campaigns)--they only go one way. Blogs, as Al Gore notes in his new book, have a fairly unique ability to be true communication tools. However, in most cases, nobody reads replies. Some don't even allow them. When that happens, they're rightly perceived as PR.

I largely agree. Here are some thoughts.

The Dean blog served a few different purposes.

(1) Many of Matt's blog posts underlined real policy differences, and did so in a refreshingly combative way. Howard had ideas about the war that were NOT getting reported, and needed to get reported--so it was a real use of the new media to get outside the throttle of old media.

(2) We used it for what you might call organizing, but I would call everything. We used it when we wanted to get programmers to volunteer to help build something. We used it when we needed people to give us ideas. And, because we were such an underdog for so long, we really needed people--this was no "its all about you" as in, "all i care about is you," but as in, "if you don't volunteer in seattle, we are really in trouble." In that sense, for a long time, it was honest.

(3) It was very much a place for idea sharing and organizing among non-staffers.

(4) It was a place to spring surprises on the press--now that was fun. Part of the reason I think we got early traction was because of how mischievously Matt and Trippi used it to leverage the msm against itself, so no-one knew what was going to happen.

Going to the point of this essay, we also used it to engage people and inspire them. This is a tricky task, and can easily fall into meaningless PR--and I'm sure it did for us, too at times. What we hoped, though, was that we were giving a different way of thinking about politics, and provided a new narrative, a new way of looking at the world, that would support activists in their uncertainties.

When it worked, the inspiration and community and cheerleading was there, but it was secondary to unreported policy and real needs. We hoped it was like the inspirational speech at the beginning of a working meeting--part of the thing but not the only thing.