Sunday, May 25, 2008
News
McCain’s hot Blogette
Is Meghan McCain’s Barbie-ish blog a stealth weapon for her dad’s campaign?
Meghan watches as her father, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, delivers remarks at the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Memorial Stadium on April 2.
PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images
"Some of My Favorite Things"
POSTED BY MEGHAN ON 05.12.08 9:53 AM
Movies:
The Big Lebowski
Some Like It Hot
Marie Antoinette
The Manchurian Candidate
Planet of the Apes
Easy Rider
Fight Club
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Books:
The Alchemist
Ishmael
Life of Pi
Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72
The Art and Power of Being a Lady
The Elegant Universe (If you haven’t read this book, go amazon.com it immediately!)
Food:
Mexican
Indian
Korean (I have a serious addiction to kimchi!)
Shoes:
Steve Madden
Jessica Simpson
Christian Louboutin
Sunglasses:
Ray Ban and Oliver Peoples
TV Shows:
Sex and the City
Project Runway
The Sopranos
SNL
Flight of the Conchords
Upright Citizens Brigade
SOURCE: www.mccainblogette.com
By Chuck Stanley
If you removed the sex from HBO’s “Sex and the City,” took all of the drugs and most of the politics out of Hunter Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72,” and then mashed the two together in an online diary, perhaps you would wind up with something like McCainBlogette.com, subtitled “Musings and Pop Culture on the Political Trail.”
Meghan McCain is the “blogette” to which her blog’s title refers; the “ette” suffix is an indication of its feminine overtones, not an attempt to convey any diminutive dimensions. The site is a Rubenesque chronicle of Meghan’s exploits as she crosses the nation with her father’s campaign entourage. Professional photography and occasional videos, courtesy of Heather Brand and Shannon Brae respectively, accompany Meghan’s musings on her role as daughter of the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain.
That role comes across as decidedly apolitical, but on closer inspection, Meghan McCain’s blog could pack a punch at the polls come November.
“Timberlands and Townhalls” is the title of one post from before the New Hampshire primary. In it, the younger McCain cheerfully recounts picking out a pair of new Timberland boots for her father at the shoe company’s headquarters in New Hampshire before a town-hall style meeting there. Like most posts on the blog, this one is far more about Timberlands than it is about town halls—Meghan McCain rarely delves into politics.
Sticking to the banal would seem to be a chore on the Web diary of a political campaign. But Meghan McCain makes it seem effortless. Only occasionally are the endless campaign “play lists,” makeup tips and ruminations about appetizers (P.F. Chang’s lettuce wraps rock her world, incidentally) interrupted with vanilla statements about political issues like, “I am very passionate about climate change.”
Seems innocuous enough. Everyone from hip-hop artists to fashion designers has dipped into the topic of global warming. And that remark about climate change is as far as Meghan McCain seems willing to go in commenting on environmental policies.
“It’s still strategic. Every picture has a purpose,” says Robert Denton, who teaches political communication at Virginia Tech. “It creates [a] sense of identification in terms of a father image. There’s [pictures of] the grandmother, or McCain’s mother. That shows he’s not as old as he seems.”
Steering away from specifics is probably a wise move, says Jennifer Lawless, associate professor of political science at Brown University.
“You can imagine what [the criticism] would be if this young woman who doesn’t have political experience was spending all of her time blogging about policy intricacies,” says Lawless. “If you’re not a policy expert, you automatically garner a lot of criticism for talking about policy.”
As Lawless notes, Meghan McCain’s climate change comment addresses an issue important to many voters without ever having to actually discuss policy. “By virtue of blogging on behalf of her father, that sort of sends a signal to voters that John McCain has a good relationship with his daughter,” she says. “By virtue of having this blog, she is sending a signal that matters to a lot of voters.”
UGA: “No one had even heard of that blog, and they’re political science majors”
Some positive responses to McCain’s blog reflect Lawless’ assessment. In January, Michelle Marts, a blogger from Tallahassee, Fla., wrote of McCainBlogette, “I am the most apathetic person when it comes to politics. However, after reading one post, I already felt like I know John McCain—the dad. And since I have a great relationship with my dad, I kinda had good feelings about John McCain.”
In a recent batch of McCainBlogette’s “Viewer Mail,” a 24-year-old from Dublin, Calif., gushes, “People only have to read and watch your blogs for a short time to realize that you and your family are normal people. It’s great to see that you can bring back some humanity to politics that has been absent for some time.”
So how important might McCainBlogette be in shaping opinions about John McCain? Political scientist Matthew Baum, a visiting professor of public policy at Harvard University. Baum, studies how the media shape public opinion through agenda-setting and framing of issues. Without glancing at McCain’s blog, he can gauge its value and its limitations based on the Internet outreach of campaigns in general. Campaign Web sites, he says, are typically more effective at rallying the base than changing negative opinions of a candidate. While Web sites and blogs allow campaigns to speak directly to voters, they are best suited for reaching those who already support their platforms.
“People disproportionately like to seek out Web sites that will tell them that they’re right or that their beliefs are correct,” says Baum. “[The Internet] is much better for preaching to the choir than it is for converting the flock, because the flock is in all likelihood seeking out sources where they are reinforcing what they already believe.”
If McCainBlogette is intended as a stealth device to win over young people who may not otherwise feel compelled to cast ballots, a class at the University of Georgia has shown that it might not be stealthy enough. Audrey Haynes, who teaches political science at UGA, polled her classroom of juniors and seniors on their opinions of the site. “No one had even heard of that blog, and they’re political science majors, all but three or four,” she recounts. After viewing the blog, she says, most of her students were skeptical that it was anything more than a campaign tool. She does note, however, that her students might have been predisposed to an analytical view of the site by virtue of the setting. “They’re sitting in a media and politics class, where all we’re doing is discussing media and strategic communication,” she says.
For the blog to motivate even those who already support John McCain, people have to visit the site. Although McCainBlogette has gotten attention from GQ and the online magazine Slate, the amount of traffic it receives is less than staggering. Alexa.com, a Web site that tracks the popularity and reach of Web content, shows the reach of McCainBlogette at about .0025 percent of the Internet population, which means it’s not in the top-ranked 100,000 sites on the web. To put this in perspective, John McCain’s official Web site currently has a reach of around .0085 percent of the Internet population and is ranked at around 14,000. The web tabloid TMZ recently reached as much as .25 percent of the Web population and is ranked in the top 500 most popular Web sites.
Despite its limited reach and questions about its ability to shape voter opinions of John McCain on a broad scale, McCainBlogette shouldn’t be written off as inconsequential. With what appears to be a close election looming, influencing even a small percentage of the electorate could pay huge dividends. As Denton notes, “When we’re looking at some 14 battleground states where just a very few thousand votes can make a difference … every vote is magnified.” SP
How to Blogette
Recent entries from Meghan McCain’s blog:
“Over the summer we went on the ‘No Surrender Tour’ where my dad spoke at VFW halls. It was very moving to meet so many people my age who had served our country in such an incredibly selfless way. Those experiences will always resonate with me.” —May 18
“Here's one of my favorite pics of me with my dad. It was taken in 1986 (I was two years old) during my dad’s first Senate campaign with the late, great Barry Goldwater.”—May 10
“Today we attended a health care forum sponsored by the Miami Children’s Hospital where we heard many patients, their families, and doctors describe their heart-wrenching ordeals and challenges with the health care system.”—April 29