Finally able to lightly applaud the launch of John McCain's official Twitter profile, we find out it's not really John McCain. I dig in to look at how Barack Obama uses Twitter and then offer two quick, commonsense ways John McCain could gain traction on Twitter.

Good online strategy is simple: reflect the very best of your candidate offline. John McCain offline is transparent, accessible, and willing to answer any question. John McCain online is stilted and awkwardly asking me for money. There’s a fundamental disconnect.

What Zack Exley has written here is truly wise, and bears repeating until every campaign manager and general consultant has heard it loud and clear. Don't hire an Internet person!

So I think that all of us “Internet people” need to put our foot down. Let’s remove “Internet” from our titles and resumes. The longer we leave “Internet” on our name tags, the longer we’re enabling all this bad behavior—and devaluing our own contribution to the movement at the same time.

I know people who are the future of the progressive movement. Most of them have “Internet” stuck on them. But they are not Internet strategists, they are strategists. They are not Internet communicators, they are communicators. They are not Internet organizers, they are organizers.

Don’t take that “Director of Internet Communications” job. Take the “Director of Communications” job.

Amen.

The question the campaigns this year have struggled with is whether or not to set up an Internet division. By and large doing so is the right decision, because right now, not having one means that the Internet is sublimated to communications-by-press-release hell.

But make no mistake. That shouldn't be our end goal.