I spent the day in a bunker-like lecture hall deep in the bowels TCD’s Arts Block listening to highly-informed journalists and academics. The vast majority of the speakers were either insightful, educational or entertaining – some were all three. I thought Michael Marsh (TCD, ‘Do our elections do what we want them to?’) and Michael Gallagher (also TCD, ‘The role of the TD’) stood out amongst the academics.

As one may have expected the academics’ presentations were slightly more analytical and evidence-based than the media types. However it should also be noted that Fionnan Sheehan of the Irish Independent gave one of the more engaging talks of the day. He was responding to Marsh. Sheehan bridged the gap between journalistic and academic by speaking from his experience as a political journalist but also providing statistical evidence to back up his opinions.

Professor John Coakley’s presentation ‘Political Culture in Ireland, where can we go from here?’ has been rejigged into an opinion piece on the aforementioned page 12. Elaine Byrne’s article beside Coakley’s is something of a round-up of the conference’s more interesting commentary – worth reading.

The round-table discussion at the end of the day was interesting. Garrett Fitzgerald’s in-depth knowledge of all-things-Ireland never fails to amaze. Vincent Browne and Donal O’Brochlain put forward separate detailed cases for reforms that they believed were required to improve how the country is governed. A member of the lecturing staff from NUI Maynooth whose name escapes me brought attention to the low female-to-male ratio in the Dáil. It was a highly informed and, at times, animated discussion. However, something about it didn’t sit right with me.

About half-way through his four or five minute speech a well known TV-presenter-and-journalist-who-cannot-be-quoted-directly-because-the-discussion-was-under-Chatham House-rules paused mid-sentence to say…

“… of course this is all fantasy, the whole day is fantasy, none of this will make a slight bit of difference. None of this will ever be implemented, it’s just fantasy”

[Note: Not a direct quote, paraphrased].

It irks me that that attitude seemed have been accepted by the conference as a whole. I – rather nervously – said that it irked me during the discussion when the opportunity arose. There’s no point gathering some of the country’s most respected members of the intelligentsia to speak about political reform if you’re not going to least attempt to follow through on the discussion. I asked why we simply accepted the aforementioned audience member’s fantasies as fantasies, I felt that in taking that attitude the conference as a whole was simply talking-the-talk…

One of the speakers earlier in the day had lamented that the Irish electorate was complacent, that they appeared to want change but weren’t prepared to vote for it – yet it seemed to me that the conference was behaving in almost exactly the same way. It seemed to have been accepted by those in attendance that the conference would split at the day’s end, journalists would return to the pub newsroom, academics would return to the lectern, civil servants would melt back into their department and politicians would continue politicking. Would we all forgot about what was suggested then in fifty years time do it all again? C’mon…

While my observations were somewhat dismissed initially by some sections of the audience (admittedly, they are somewhat idealistic) but they did seem to be taken on board by the organisers and panel members afterward. I had suggested that the political scientists mirror the economists and start a group blog, afterward I was told that there are now plans afoot to do so.

Hopefully they weren’t simply humouring me.

To say I’m excited about the idea that Irish political scientists will begin publishing online is an understatement. Giving the public the opportunity to read, learn from and respond to the arguments advocated by respected and impartial political scientists is something that lays the foundations for reform. It’s hugely democratic. Yesterday was the first time I’ve sat in a university lecture hall and I believe I’ve had more educational opportunity than most, this discussion needs to be brought out of the bunker and arguably beyond The Irish Times. A blog is a step in the right direction. As one member of the audience said – the electorate needs to be informed before the country can be reformed.

Hopefully the poli-sci group will take to the medium, it would be awful to allow the debate fall from the public sphere with the final opinion piece in the Irish Times this week. The most-informed voices in the field need to put their heads above the parapet in the same way the economists have done. The beauty of blogging is that you can stick to a niche, allowing suggestions, theories and debate to gather snow over the course of time. By noticing that fact the economists have garnered amazing media attention and impact the mainstream news commentariat. The Irisheconomy.ie blog has become one of the most informative online publications in the country in part because of the quality of the posts and in part because the language used can be understood by the average reader, we need the same from the political scientists.

It was argued yesterday that the economy is in a bad way because it reflects our political culture – if we’re taking that as truth then we need our political scientists writing consistently now more than ever. We need them to do so somewhere newspaper journalists and citizens can access easily, so they can cite the articles and develop an opinion. If done correctly this will foster conversation around the topic – like I said, we can’t afford to think that we come back in 50 years and have this conversation again…

I’d happily help the people involved yesterday set up a decent wordpress blogging system. I’d suggest they give anyone who they deem to be informed on relevant topics a username and password, let them write - treat people who leave comments as peers, discuss, debate, converse. Irishelection.com will do what we can to send traffic their way, get in touch.

To borrow a term from the politicians - it’s in the public interest.

In conclusion, an interesting and informative conference that I wholly commend and thank Elaine Byrne, Matthew Wall and Jane Suitor for organising – but it will have been a waste of time if the discussion doesn’t continue in the public sphere.

Fingers crossed.

We have plenty in store for the moratorium period – we couldn’t starve you of last minute chances to make up your mind. There will be a liveblog set up for the Local and Euro elections which we will post the link to later this week. The hashtag for the liveblog on twitter will be #le09.

Twitter:

Make sure you are getting the most from the day by hashtagging all your election tweets with #le09. Follow the irishelection account, for breaking news and blog updates. The liveblog will pick up the hashtag and we get to keep up with all the latest – so don’t forget the tag!

The Count:

At the moment we are getting in touch with people attending the different count centres in the hope that, like 2007, our readers can provide up to the minute information, gossip, rumours and pictures to bring to the coverage.  This is where we ask for help.

If you are going to a count, canvass, party or election event in the coming days please get in touch with us. You will be able to text, twitter, email, call in your information and we can keep everyone up to date with the happenings.

Email us on irishelection (at) gmail.com and we will work out a way for every single person to contribute in the most convenient way for them.

In 2007 we were first with all the major news, including a pic of McDowell resigning before people even knew he had. This time around, a huge election, we get to have more fun than last time. We will be posting over the next day or two on the main technology for our coverage. Do get in touch if you can give us any of your time.

The Coverage:

There will be audio, video, picture and lots of excellent analysis between the live blog, irishelection.com, twitter and the bloggers party. If you are using flickr or pix.ie make sure to use the LE09 tag for your photos.

We are setting up a blogger HQ for all the irishelection.com team close to the RDS count centre and it will be base camp for the bloggers covering the day.

The good people at D4 Hotels have made sure that the blogger HQ will be our nerve centre and your first call for info on the day.

More details on all of the main elements of coverage to come over the next few days, not to mention some moratorium busting.

If you can help please do. Thanks a million!

The event will be broadcast live  on his ustream account, questions are invited through his website or via twitter and the event recorded for future reference.

Sky News yesterday confirmed that they also are not using the company or it’s content for online coverage of European Parliament Elections.  This follows confirmation from the Irish Times revealed here last month that they had ‘no arrangement of any sort’ with MiCandidate.

As has been documented extensively both here and elsewhere candidates in local and European Elections have been sold the MiCandidate Pro package with promises of inclusion on the most popular websites in the state.  Remember the whole point of the licencing that MiCandidate promised was that candidates would gets lots of hits and would be seen extensively throughout the Irish web as well as giving candidates a web presence – incluidng blogging, youtube and twitter accounts.

So in my (not so humble) opinion if you are a candidate who paid €250 plus €35 or €99 per month on the basis of sales pitches which said that the information would be available and used by RTE and the Irish Times you may get your hand out to ask for your money back.

PS: To those people who paid you may like to know that those who have not yet signed up have been promised their money back if they do not win their seat – that might also be important to have in your back pocket as you email MiCandidate asking for a full refund.

I and other bloggers have been sent emails from candidates where the commitments and promises were made. Press releases were issued by MiCandidate.eu announcing the use of the site and the data by companies and we were told that the company were seeking High Potential Start-Up status from Enterprise Ireland.

From a press release dated March 26

RTÉ, the Telegraph, the Independent and TV3 are some of the many media organisation who have today confirmed that they have chosen to use miCandidate.eu for their election coverage. From April 15th thousands of candidates profiled on the miCandidate.eu website will also appear on dozens of Ireland’s and Europe’s most popular news websites..

So in the space of  seven weeks

• Sky News have said they are not taking part.
• The Irish Times have said that they have no agreement.
• RTE have confirmed that they are not involved with the company and using their own data.
  
• Confirmation on the status of the Telegraph and Independent is awaited.
• The traffic to TV3′s site if they are using the site would be very limited.

Bloggers attended events where logos of the various media companies were used in presentations.  Interviews were given and recorded and candidates have spoken widely to bloggers and other candidates about the sales pitches.

Of course the strategy of MiCandidate has been to ignore the fact checking and questions from bloggers or even prospective customers. Or to talk about the 22 local papers who have are using the ‘iframe technology’ provided by Micandidate.eu  Hardly the audience of RTE, Irish Times of Sky News now is it?

But wait there’s always the Union of Students in Ireland? Yes that’s right some student organisations and other websites will be using the information so maybe their visitors (who’ll not be living near (ie. in a position to vote for!) people like Margaret Connell from Granard running for election to Longford County Council.) That’s a lot of money paid out to be seen by so few.

If you didn’t pay your money but filled in the forms in the hope your voters would see your basic information you will obviously be dissappointed. But your campaign may be a lot better off finanicially and it seems there are and will be a lot of other free sources of information online about candidates that don’t promise the earth only to provide planets in other galaxies.

But I’m not planning on participating in these and for the moment I’m going to plunder the best and worst and most interesting of the web, twitter, youtube and the like and Cian and I will bring snippets to you every few days. If you want to send me anything please email tips (@) mamanpoulet.com – all presents will be gratefully received.  There are three types of campaign to cover so we’re in campaign monitoring heaven!

And if you are wondering if I’m not a few days early in kicking off the campaign coverage – well if the posters are going up early so am I!

First a nod to something that happened yesterday afternoon, a ‘conversation’ between the Green Party’s Twitter Account and Peter Donegan. It’s was about Senator Deirdre de Burca and the way she might tweet at you .  It’s all one way traffic and no replies to those who ask question or look for info and well the Green Party tweeter defended Deirdre and compared her to Barack Obama’s twitter account.  Oh dear.  Stephen Spillane  rounds up the conversation for our consumption.  That’s the thing with social networks – it’s meant to be a conversation – not a megaphone!

We’re privileged to have more candidates blogging and twittering this year and the Sunny South East provides two of the finest - Cllr Joe Ryan (Lab) gives a run down of the candidate line up for Wexford Borough Council.  In Waterford I’ve been a regular reader of a blog of a independent councillor – a woman blogging politician – a very rare breed!  Cllr Mary Roche’s style of blogging is upfront and honest with snippets of colour from council meetings and reactions to local and national events. It’s definitely worth keeping an eye on. The latest post covers a speed dating for politicians event run by a local youth group.

Onto the European Parliament candidates - You may not have seen my rather middling first video diary entry yesterday regarding my thoughts on Libertas’s Mother Superior.

Labour’s Susan O’Keefe running in the North West Constituency in between seeking cups of tea has been spending time with George Clooney.

Checking out the candidate blog list it seems Mairead McGuinness from Fine Gael seems to be blogging without a  comment facility. I know she’s not alone and more on this in later round ups. I can’t find a blog from any FF European Parliament Candidate – Eoin Ryan has not updated since February and it was only one entry.  No blog on the Micandidate.eu Profile he’s bought either.

Squid from Limerick Blogger has an excellent post profiling the online nature of the candidacies in the European Parliment South Constituency.

Finally today to the treasure trove that is Youtube and what could be classed as an improvement to the pieces to camera in 2007, this year we have video blogs and adverts – efforts to make campaigns seem like a John Hinde tourist postcard?

First up is Mick Galvin – Mick is a Fine Gael candidate for Bray Town Council.  Commissioned and paid for by Glynn ’09 Local Election Campaign ‘Our Town’ believes that ”If we can all believe and be proud of our town, the things that you want changed will disappear” .  Not sure who’s fault the problems in Bray are according to Mick or the video.  Or even who Mick is!

Directed by Tom Burke and produced by Shane Hogan (Areaman) the music was composed by John Fahy. All these credits eh? Irishelection will need to organise campaign oscars!

Speaking of Oscars! We can’t not mention the Election Movie from Donegal I was tipped off about last week.

Fianna Fáil Cllr. Francis Conaghan is retiring and Paul Canning is seeking his seat. We get 8 minutes of movie here with new schools, traffic lights, water dams and footpaths. But first we get the handover and thank you speech from the retiring candidate. I’m not sure if other candidates on FF ticket get a similar nod from Francis.

NB. I will be in Manorcunningham/Letterkenny next weekend so if any candidate from whatever party would like to meet up and maybe do a short video interview let me know! I’m not a movie maker though!

–

There were a number of interesting developments that stemmed from the analysis of MiCandidate.eu posted here last week.

Firstly, The Irish Times got in contact to say they have no arrangement whatsoever with MiCandidate to display information collated by MiCandidate on irishtimes.com.

This means that any candidate who bought into MiCandidate Pro believing their information would be on The Irish Times’ website (one of the most visited media websites in the country) has been misled.

It also means that MiCandidate were falsely using the name of The Irish Times in an attempt to increase the value of their product. See these extracts from emails sent from MiCandidate to candidates:

…benefits of miCandidate for your campaign:

** Direct input of your issues and policies into RTE.ie,

Sky News, TV3 and Irish Times websites and many more in the pipeline.

and another, as published originally by Suzy Byrne…

We are very concerned that you are one of only a few remaining candidates who has not completed the information form that we sent you. Your profile will appear across dozens of Ireland’s busiest websites from RTE to the Irish Times…

but, leaving aside the issue with The Irish Times…

RTE have said they will only be showing the basic amount of information on each candidate on RTE.ie. This means all the ‘Obama Tools’ that are displayed on a candidate’s Pro profile (blog, videos, images etc), will not be displayed on RTE.ie. So, in simpler terms, the candidates who paid €235 and continue to pay €35 or €99 a month, depending on which election they are contesting, will have the same amount of information displayed on RTE.ie as the candidate who paid absolutely nothing.

The Guardian/Guardian.co.uk, the biggest newspaper website in the UK last year, do not have a contract with MiCandidate. Although I reported that there was a deal done between MiCandidate and the Guardian in The Full Analysis, this has proved inaccurate. I believed MiCandidate had an agreement with the Guardian due to these comments (and a lack of correction to a follow up question) made by Paddy Cosgrave in an interview a number of weeks ago. That combined with the fact that as I left the MiCandidate offices Cosgrave asked me to keep the information about the Guardian to myself until “next week” – unfortunately I did not record that request. I called the Guardian News Media press enquiries office yesterday and after the senior press officer I was speaking with made “a number of queries with anyone who might know” was told there nobody there aware of a company by the name of MiCandidate.

–

Last week MiCandidate sent an email to candidates claiming that MiCandidate.eu had received 110,000 views in the last week. I think it is worth pointing out that “views” is a very vague term.

There was no information in the email about whether views meant ‘unique’ views – as in 110,000 individual people viewed the the website – or if views included what are known as ‘spiders’ which is when an automated search engine (e.g. Google) accesses the website to collect all the information on every page and make it searchable for outside users. Also worth noting – as earlier reported by Simon, Alexa.com (an independent website that collects information on the amount views a website attracts) statistics show that only 52% of people who accessed MiCandidate.eu were from Ireland – this means approximately 48% of the 110,000 ‘views’ were almost worthless to Irish candidates standing in both the local and European elections. There is no way of telling a candidate how many people who viewed their profile are living in the area where they are standing for election – if you are a candidate who received an email telling you that your profile was viewed 3,000 times this does not mean 3,000 Irish people, let alone 3,000 people in your constituency, viewed your profile. It does not even necessarily mean 3,000 people viewed your profile.

Contrary to prior reports, MiCandidate have not been granted High-potential Start-up status by Enterprise Ireland. Paddy Cosgrave did use the term “high-potential start-up” during the MiCandidate ‘blogger-briefing’ but it seems he was referring to MiCandidates participation in the DIT Hothouse system. It appears ‘high-potential start-up’ is not a term exclusive to Enterprise Ireland.

In the interest of balance – a comment was left by Steve Boggis, a volunteer with Votewise.co.uk, (a UK website that does similar work to MiCandidate without charging candidates for profiles or offering the ‘Obama Tools)’. The comment stated…

Micandidate seem to have set up a UK version over the top of them. I asked the Votewise guys what they thought about this – they were very polite. They pointed out that they were not allowed to offer upgrades or anything that the candidates could pay for as this would incur Notional Expenditure on top of the cost. I asked what micandidate were doing about this and they said that Paddy had phoned them earlier this week asking what it was!

Looks like they might be inviting candidates in the UK to break the law.

Although it is true that Paddy Cosgrave called Votewise to ask about the UK law which, it was suggested, may cause MiCandidate problems (the law in question is known as ‘notional expenditure‘) it turns out it will not impact how MiCandidate operates in the UK. This writer called the UK Electoral Commission who, after I explained how MiCandidate will be operating, told me it would not constitute “inviting candidates in the UK to break the law” unless candidates failed to report their purchase and usage of a MiCandidate Pro profile to the commission.

To round up, here are a few MiCandidate related items that may make you smile (or groan, depending on whether you have paid for a Pro account or not)… they also display the value, or lack thereof, of the ‘Obama Tools’. Like I said, having a presence on Twitter does not give it a value, automatically generated posts are not the same as posts interacting with voters.

See Fianna Fáil local election candidate for Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown (Stillorgan) Liam Dockery tweeting into the abyss via his MiCandidate Twitter profile. With nobody following Liam, and Liam following nobody he is doing the online equivalent of hanging up a poster in an empty windowless hall, walking out of that hall, turning the lights off, closing the door behind him and telling nobody where he put up his lovely poster. Completely useless.

See MiCandidate themselves demonstrating how not to use Twitter – sending 21 public tweets in 16 minutes annoying several people (me amongst them admittedly) and causing a number of people to stop following their tweets. To their credit, they apologised afterwards to some people saying that they got “a bit over eager, it’s late in the office”.

And lastly, see a candidate with experience of how to work online, IT consultant and Socialist Party candidate in Howth-Malahide, Brian Greene tweeting to MiCandidate and asking if his profile is a “walled garden”. A walled garden is a place online that refuses to offer the user a link to somewhere they may find out more information. Alternatively, it could be described as a room where most of the doors are locked closed… but I’m not a fan of door analogies. Predictably, there was no reply.

–

If you are a candidate who feels they have been misled by MiCandidate regarding their claims of partnership with The Irish Times, please get in touch with me. All my information can be seen here.

I embedded the economy one below, I am interested to know what people think.

He has clearly struggled to talk directly to people, primarily because his tenor and language have been impenetrable. This is a clear effort to go over the heads of the media and directly to people – has it worked?

He has the right posture, straight into camera delivering full answers but it is worryingly similar to the detached civil-servant langugage we have become used to. Cowen is clearly a work in progress on that level. For the first part of the video below he has to find a voice, only toward the end does he come to answer questions – maybe pracitce will make perfect.

Edit to add: Another email from our dear friend. At least they got the url right this time, though it is still very clunky – who decided the popular questions? Would be nice to see and vote on the questions a-la change.gov, lots of short sentences but no call to action as yet, simply watch a video. Wonder if the forthcoming election spend reform will make reference to online.

Dear friend,

Brian Cowen answers your questionsOver the last two weeks, people from all over the country have been submitting their questions for me through the new Fianna Fáil website. I received over a thousand questions on a vast number of topics. Given the overwhelming number you submitted, I’ve only been able to answer a selection of the most popular questions. I’d like to thank each of you for putting these questions to me.

Most questions concerned the global economic crisis that faces Ireland. I want to share my answers with you so you can best understand how I and my Government intend to lead Ireland out of these difficult times.

Watch my answers here:

http://www.fiannafail.ie/thetaoiseachanswers

I answered questions about our banking system and the limits that the Government is going to place on bankers’ pay and bonuses. I listened and responded to your legitimate concerns about the pension levy we’ve been forced to impose for the good of the country’s finances. I hear the call for the country to pull together in difficult times and ask our political opponents to contribute their best ideas for the good of Ireland and its people. We have to work tirelessly – together.

Take a few minutes to watch my answers to your questions:

http://www.fiannafail.ie/thetaoiseachanswers

I want to lead Ireland out of this recession into a new type of economy – smarter, flexible and more diverse. I’ve got a plan for the next five years that will create new knowledge-based jobs and industries, intensify research and development and make our country the best possible place to start a new business.

I’m optimistic about Ireland’s future. I believe in the ability of the Irish people to work hard and to show our inherent ingenuity to bring us out of this economic crisis. Things will not get better straight away, but over the coming months and years, they will. We need to prepare for and work towards recovery.

I ask you to join me in standing up for Ireland’s future.

Brian Cowen
Taoiseach

Well Green Party activists, TDs, Senators and Ministers meet up in Wexford this weekend and they want bloggers. Kudos for the mail though, it hits the right tone the whole way through. In jokes you might need links too here and here. Great to see the initiative following Simon McGarr‘s excellent live blog and the hash tag to set up their hashtag in advance (#GP09) and a live blog.

Email below the fold – if you blog and want to go get in touch with them (damian.connonNOatSPAMgreenparty.ie).

…………..Begin Email………

Hi there,

First of all, I have emailed your (publicly listed) email addresses because you blog about politics. Apologies in advance for including your email addresses in the ‘To:’ line. I wanted to assure you that you are not being spammed or sent bulk email. Had I time, I would have emailed you all individually. I didn’t, so please accept my apologies.

If you would like to opt out of any future correspondence from the Green Party please simply reply to this email. You need not bother contacting the Data Protection Commissioner.

Here is a quick summary of facilities for accredited bloggers at our convention this weekend (URL for registration below). Once you collect your pass, which will be available from 6pm on Friday, you will have access to the press room, and therein the tea, coffee, biscuits – and most importantly sandwiches – that will appear intermittently over the weekend.

There will also be power sockets, [working] audio feeds, a TV link to the convention centre, and *fingers crossed*, half decent internet connectivity. We may have to limit this to wired connections in the media room, as we’re also going to try to live stream and it will hog up a lot of bandwidth, but there will be free public wireless access throughout the hotel.

We’ve set up liveblog page at: http://www.scribblelive.com/Event/Green_Party_Convention_09 and suggest using the following twitter hashcode: #GP09.

We have also tried to take on the suggestions that arose from the FF ard fheis (thanks Suzie), but if you have any feedback please drop Martin and myself a line.

And please pass this on to any of fellow bloggers that I have missed and who may be interested. Details about a briefing on Wednesday are also below.

Damian

If you want to join in the live blogging fun from home you can find us here – Registration is simple through Facebook or Twitter or MSN profile and one of the creators of the session will then sort out comments etc. to be published on the blog.

If you are at the Ard Fheis or watching at home or listening to radio coverage and want to tweet rather than live blog your thoughts you might use the tag #ffaf so they are easier to find. Your tweets can be picked up and entered into the Liveblog coverage.

I’m not sure at the moment what Fianna Fáil’s own intentions are regarding online coverage or if there will be any tweeting, youtubes or live blogging coming from party staff but if I find anything I’ll point you in it’s direction.

Finally of course if you have questions for me to try to ask or comments on anything you see/hear feel please feel free to comment!

As a seminar it wasn’t great. As a site launch it wasn’t much better, at least I thought so last night. However this morning that failure has lit a path of links through a much higher amount of bloggers than it otherwise would have. Yes it was a fail and no, many who attended aren’t happy at what what the event turned out to be, so they wrote about it. Far from emotion feeding itself into a frothy irrational rage it rather seemed to those of us who where there that a great number of people at the event all came to the same conclusion at the same time. This is Fianna Fail’s great test.

Do they write off web outreach as they cannot ever hope to manage it? If so just wait and see what happens when you give those tools to people on the ground. Or do you take the sliver of a silver lining from the pr fail? That being the many more communication channels are open today if you figure out what to say to attempt to make it right.
The reason this kicked off is like Gav said Obama is a pop culture deity not a politico’s property and any event tied to his operation will attract all sorts of people turned off by the thought of a Fianna Fail launch. Those people shows for the Obama aspect and got the Fianna Fail General Secretary and a hard launch of the website. Big mistake but if you are committed to the web you learn from those, learn the netiquette of building personal communications and personal channels and you try again. This weekend as the party returns to the warm embrace of the faithful burned by it’s initial attempt to hug the web generation it can make it work or give it up.

Last night they learned it ain’t just the tools – it is what you do, how you do it and the inportance of tone and frame. If last nights example were applied to the idea of a video Q&A then it’s doomed to hand picked questions softballed to Cowen or others.

If the lesson is learned we get a model like change.gov and the transparent questions for Obama (like but not identical to, I hope). Don’t sit back on this FF, instead get behind Damien’s effort to comment everywhere and learn to firefight. The Democrats have a huge love hate relationship with blogs as bloggers push them, call them out on issues of disagreement and often refuse to toe the line. Your experience will be worse, you’re in government.

Indeed, how can it really be all bad when you get some very clever and very clear insight into where you can improve from some of the best people in the blogosphere, political and non-political.