bestkungfu weblog

This is the third consecutive post in which I mention Dave Winer. God willing, it will be the last for some time.

The terrifyingly well-read and fashionable Jay McCarthy writes about me writing about Winer. I respond to him in navel-gazing distributed blog discussion format here:

Point 1: The point should not be to get elected to office. The point should be to be the person who the people want to be in office. Don’t convince them, be their voice.

I used to believe this myself: that a candidate should embody the will of the voter. This concept of one person, one vote is the essence of pure democracy. But we don’t have, and in my opinion are far too large a country to have, pure democracy. We have representative democracy, and some salesmanship has to come into play. You cannot have your choice of empty vessel in which to instill your individual political bent. That won’t cut it. Voters who wish to take stock in what is out there need to evaluate the candidates to see which of them to support, and then ply them with policy requests. (I’ve got a few such requests for Dean, for example.) It is the job of a candidate seeking election to take the support of like-minded individuals and use that to convince others. If this holds true, then what the Dean and Clark campaigns are doing with free software is brilliant.

To the extent that a candidate has to be honest about her or his political position, I agree that it is not enough just to be elected, but to fulfill to the best of your ability the will of your constituents. But if you’re not in the race to win, you’re an “issue candidate”, and issue candidates in play after the early primaries become protest votes (see: Buchanan 1992), then distractions (see: Perot 1992), then impediments (see: Nader 2000).

Point 2: A candidate could go against the media companies by refusing to participate in the corruption of our democracy and instead actually engage citizens rather than shout at them and try to propagandize them until they blindly support the candidate.

I’m familiar with this. Some call them committees, some working groups. In other words, it’s an attempt at consensus. I know consensus. What is known about consensus is that “consensus costs.” It takes time to get deep into theory debates with voters, especially in this day and age when candidates have to announce their intentions and have a coherent policy platform two years before the first vote is cast. Candidates need to run on their records, because they will be held to them — or their lack of them — in the general. Each candidate has a publicly viewable platform, and voters are responsible for determining which best matches their politics, and whether they are reputable — and, yes, viable — enough to win.

Another angle at this point: the software that started this whole thing is, in my opinion, the best thing around for engaging citizens. If the direct approach catches on in 2004, then the social networks created in this campaign will be well-equipped for 2008. (Note the relative power that MoveOn has. That all came out of the Clinton impeachment hearings four years ago.) This has progressive activism written all over it.

So, here’s what I know. Winer read (and quoted) Jay’s response to me. So I presume he read at least the quoted bits on makeoutcity. Predictably, he says that people responding (me, Aaron Swartz, Gregor Rothfuss) didn’t get his point. A personal favorite note is the tasty sideswipe on Gregor’s blog:

Learn Gregor, open your mind. How disappointing to see you be part of the mob. Most of them I’m not bothering to respond to, but I thought you were a thinker, not a slug.

So. “The mob” retorts: no, Dave, you’re the one who’s not getting it. Writing some free blogging software isn’t resulting in the decline and fall of the American programmer. It’s just a good use of political capital when it’s more plentiful than actual capital.

Political candidates are not a great market for products. In my mind, they shouldn’t be. Candidates should receive free air time on network television for their ads — partly because they shouldn’t have to create financial relationships with the companies that report on them, and partly because the networks have to do so damned little in the way of public service to begin with. However, in this time and place, the candidates need the money where the grassroots effort doesn’t get them, as candidates like Kucinich might have noticed. They have nothing to gain by paying for something they’re currently getting for free. (Winer should know that Clark’s supporters were working on stuff like this before he was even a candidate. Why? Because he knows Stirling Newberry, of the Draft Clark project. So why the bluster?)

I half-expect another oblique reference, in which “some people” (read: me) are idiots and can’t read for content. That’s Winer’s modus operandi. No big. That’s his game, and he plays it well. I just question his grasp of campaign finances (hint: save now, spend later), and his own intellectual honesty when it hits a little too close to home.