While I do not share in the interest in Governor Dean as a presidential candidate, one aspect of his campaign that has received welcome attention is his use of blogs. Blogs, or web logs, are a rapidly growing forum for individuals to post their take on world events, politics, or the cats from home on to the Internet with almost no effort beyond thinking and typing.
Howard Dean set new standards for use of the Internet in a mainstream campaign; the web proved to be a huge fundraising tool, a place for supporters to meet and cheaply hash out (no pun intended) local strategy. While Dean’s support proved to be a mirage, the Internet garnered Dean massive publicity, cast him as a front runner, and filled his war chest-no small feat considering Dean governed a state as populous as Omaha, Nebraska.
Very likely, long after Dean is gone, which could be very soon, blogs will become a permanent vehicle for both mainstream candidates that want to branch out and independent thinkers that need a cheap and effective medium to share their views. This trend is hard to ignore; more famous bloggers like Andrew Sullivan, Lawrence Lessig, Daniel Drezner, Charles Johnson and anonymous writers such as Atrios, and Tacitus have thousands of readers hit their sites every day. With just a small PayPal icon on their page, a few are even able to support themselves solely by blogging.
What does this mean? First of all, it places willing, talented, independent writers on a much more level playing field with the established media giants from the New York Times to CNN. While blogs could never match the fact-gathering of those bodies, the speed at which the blogging community can absorb information and fact-check politicians is breathtaking. Imagine CNN’s Crossfire; now remove the hosts, add about 30 highly educated commentators, let everyone take their turn with the world of information at their fingertips, add some crack, and you have the most advanced, most expedient forum for political debate yet realized.
With television and print stuck in slower output cycles, unable to react to up-to-the-minute information and unable to scrutinize every detail of every column by, say, Paul Krugman on the spot, blogs have served to expose candidates in all their two-faced glory. Nowhere will you find more cogent arguments on the “imminent threat” debate, and nowhere will you find better supported arguments on every issue, from the War on Terror to Israel.
As the internet was first emerging, most teachers warned against relying on the Internet as a research tool. Today, this warning still has its merits, but more and more, the best place to learn about every angle of a political debate is the free forums on blogs. They encourage you to read endlessly and they force you to go buy books to catch up to other posters, who are more often than not PhDs, JDs, and so on. Lessig and Stephen Bainbridge are both law professors that have increased their prestige with their blogs. Considering they teach at Stanford and UCLA, respectively, this is as strong an endorsement as you might find.
In short, with all the talk of politics in the forum of this page, it is important to realize there is a medium that is not renewed three times a week, but 24 hours a day, one with the chance to immediately respond, and to make your own mark. Whatever your home on the political spectrum, you will find allies, kindred spirits, and even better, new foes always up to the task.