Of course it will and it seems to me that this is a very good thing.
Will it make John Edwards a more transparent open candidate if he runs for president? Was he being candid when he said he would try to be more candid? While I am curious to see how he progresses, I don't think that part of it is all that important. What I think is very important is that mainstream politicians, like mainstream corporate executives are coming to understand that their ways of marketing themselves, their products and services have become increasingly ineffective at about the same rate they have become more expensive.
I think Edwards spoke for a great many prominent people when he admitted his struggle to unlearn the years of media and presentation training that makes so many of them so adept at saying nothing with great eloquence.
I'm not really concerned about Edwards and the conversation he inspired at Gnomedex. If you want to know more, then David Parmet's excellent executive summary may be a good link for you to follow.
What does interest me is how blogging will evolve as a factor in the political process. We all know the Howard dean tale and that it was probably Joe Trippi and not the actual candidate who understood you could get more votes for ewer dollars by speaking with passion and knowledge on a blog. I've repeatedly heard that Republicans used an even more effective strategy in the last presidential election by using blogs at the grassroots. In Indiana and Ohio and I assume elsewhere in the swing states and heartlands, local leaders including ministers blogged in favor of Bush, which I think was much more effective than if Bush had done it himself. There have been several candidates and elected officials who have started blogging since the last presidential election. One of note is Tony Williams, Washington DC's mayor whose blog demonstrates occasional bursts of transparency and candor. What I find most interesting in Williams blog is not always what he says, but what his constituency says to him and his apparent willingness to let these comments stand unfiltered.
But that brings me to the other side of the equation and where blogging is going to emerge as a huge factor in future national, statewide and local elections. It's not what they say to us so much as what we can now say to them and to each other.
Yep, Blogging 101, lesson #1 clearly states that its not about the speaker but about the conversation. Now we can each speak out and actually be heard. We can find communities of people who agree with us and we can impact and pressure public officials to act in ways we'd like and with blogging we can do it without raising millions and forming a political action committee. We can call out politicians to be responsible, t be accountable and to prove they are not as stupid, arrogant, cheesy or bland as so many often appear to be so much of the time.
The power of blogging it seems to me is not in what they say to us so much as what we say to them and about them. They can either join the conversations which are already getting louder or they can stick to their talking points and hope for the best.
In any case, I think this is a great topic to boot around over Independence Day weekend. Don't you?
