Dirty Sexy Politics

^{Chapter 4} The Birth of Blogette

When I first joined the campaign, it was hard to get into the pace—or figure out what my role would be. I wanted to find a way to fit in, stay out of trouble, and contribute something of value. The campaign was a small band in those days, a tight group. My real job as a daughter-of was mostly cosmetic and decorative. I was supposed to stand straight, wave, smile, and look nice, but not too nice. (No skin, no bling!) But I wanted to contribute more.

I’m sure there was some eye-rolling at campaign headquarters when word got out that I wanted to write a blog. As anybody who’s interned or worked in their mom’s or dad’s office knows, you can get pegged as a raging brat really fast. The smell of entitlement oozes from your skin and follows you around like a cloud, no matter what you do.

But as serendipity would have it, Rick Davis was running the campaign in those days. Rick is charming—a handsome older-guy type with wire-rim glasses and old-school suits and ties. He always picked up the phone when I called, and laughed at my jokes. He believed in me or, at least, had the good manners to act like it. He cut me some slack, the way my dad always did. And I needed it.

Let’s face it. As far as politics went, I was hardly a super-skilled professional. I had just graduated from Columbia with a degree in art history, an academic discipline that I love and was serious about in college. I had no experience in fieldwork or political strategy. Aside from my shit detector and gut, which, thank God, were often on target, I knew very little about campaigning.

But I do have a sixth sense about the Internet, and an ability to combine large amounts of information and create a focused, toned-down segment. I had worked as a paid summer intern for Newsweek magazine and followed a number of blogs. This, combined with the fact that I’m a nonstop extrovert, a people person who loves mingling and gabbing and getting out in the world, a blog that chronicled my days on the campaign—and showed the silliness and madness, as well as the seriousness—seemed like a perfect idea. Sheer genius! Or so I thought.

My mother loved the idea, became my biggest supporter, and pushed pretty hard for the campaign to let me do it. Once I had agreed to pay for all the costs of the blog, including staff and travel, how could they turn me down? Still, it took convincing and a fair amount of drama and, of course, lawyers had to get involved.

But I am stubborn, and always have been—and I was determined to make it happen and used voter demographics to argue my case. The audience that I would reach with a blog, or hoped to, was one that all the collected eggheads of my father’s campaign—the strategists and polling experts—had the most trouble with: young moderates and independents. The Republican National Committee had raised and spent millions of dollars on market research, and come up with zillions of ideas about using the Internet, but we had little presence there.

Republicans “got” radio. Conservatives were heard, loud and clear, on those airwaves. But aside from viral lies and mudslinging, like the Swift Boat Campaign against John Kerry, which was a really shameful moment in political history, the party just didn’t get the digital scene. What year was this? 2007. And the presidential campaign was poised to be groundbreaking in terms of communication tactics and media. Digital was definitely the place to be. For a political candidate, the blogosphere was exciting, persuasive, and reached voters instantly. Best of all, aside from production costs, it was free. There was Facebook, MySpace, and a day didn’t go by without YouTube. The old world of print journalism was making a crash landing.

And yet, the Republican Party was stuck in the tar pits, waiting (yet again) for the country to time travel back to the beloved Reagan era, as if wishing could make it so. (The irony is that the Reagan administration was so forward-thinking and creative when it came to media.) But these days, the unwillingness of the Republican Party to enter the real world stunned me.

Young people found their news on Internet sites and blogs—and were comfortable with outlets like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, that combined frivolity, even occasional vulgarity, with straight reporting and commentary. But so far, I couldn’t see what was being offered online that might help my dad’s race. Most of the news sites were left-leaning and made little effort to even conceal it. Politico, which was launched in January 2007, was smart and not angry—it felt like real reporting without a noticeable political bent, which made it the exception—but it wasn’t exactly a laugh riot.

It’s not that young people can’t be serious. But they are accustomed to being entertained—and are drawn to reality shows and, at least, a feeling of realness that a good blog creates. My idea was to produce a daily record of campaign highlights as seen through my eyes and, more than anything, update the image of Republicans. If we were going to attract a younger following, we really had to start there.

In politics, passion counts for a lot. The side with the most juice and spirit, and the loudest voices, gets heard the most. This is why, politically, the Republican Party is drifting toward the interests of the Christian Right, who are organized and very passionate. Moderates, by comparison, come off as compliant and easygoing and kind of weak-spirited. It’s like they have nothing except their equanimity to organize themselves around.

So if you are young and moderate, like me and tens of millions of other voters, you are part of the great misunderstood—and missed—voting bloc. But we count for as much as one-third of the electorate.

Young people are passionate, that’s for sure. But they aren’t scared and filled with hate. They are excited by change, new ideas, and fresh starts. It must be a law of nature. The young are meant to challenge the status quo and question conventions. Our job is to critique the progress made by the previous generation and push back with new ideas.

But lately, in the Republican Party, anybody with a new idea is labeled “progressive,” that dirty word, or just ignored. I can’t think of a greater turn-off. Why would a vibrant young person, full of energy and passion and lots of creativity, be interested in the Republican Party if new ideas and fresh starts aren’t welcome? This might explain why the vast majority of the under-thirty vote aren’t registered Republicans.

When I joined the campaign, I wasn’t even one.