Monthly Archives: February 2012

Looking Good Losing

New York Times columnist David Brooks often gets it right. He wrote a column the other day where he lays out (again) the push and (not so hard) pull in the Republican Party between moderates and those who keep marching even further to the right. I wrote an op-ed published by the Los Angeles Times in 1995 that carried the headline “Be Wary of a Party of One” that laid out the beginning trend back then of the religious right doing the hard work of, in effect, taking over the GOP from the bottom up, and warning about the dangers of one-minded political party. I didn’t know we had it so good back then.
Posted on February 29, 2012 By B. Jay Cooper
Categories  U.S. Elections | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Setting the Narrative on Primary Day

With the polls in Michigan and Arizona open, we’ve been watching to see who uses Twitter effectively to set the narrative for the day’s national political reporting. At APCO Worldwide, we’ve gained a lot of insights from the following “tweeters:” Reid Epstein. POLITICO’s Epstein has been following the Romney campaign and has been tweeting both the substantive issues and the unscripted quips that always seem to give the former governor problems. One day after he tweeted that Romney hadn’t talked with his traveling press corps in three weeks, Romney was answering his questions.
Posted on February 28, 2012 By David Wescott
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Return of the Smoke-Filled (Smokeless) Back Room

From the late 1880s through the middle of the last century, American politics was dominated by political machines – urban in nature, built on the mobilization of voters through pay-outs and patronage and ensuring their survival through the hand-picking of candidates for local, state and national office. The names of the leaders of these machines – William Tweed of New York, James Prendergast of Missouri and of course, Richard Daley of Chicago – are part of the lexicon of American politics. While often focused on local and state elections, at the national level they, along with such figures as Mark Hanna of Ohio, were kingmakers, and their actions and the actions of other bosses around the country gave rise to the notion of the smoke-filled back room where they met, where deals were made and where presidents were elected – or not.
Posted on February 28, 2012 By Barry Schumacher
Categories  U.S. Elections U.S. Politics | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The Ford Field #FAIL – Brought To You By Twitter

Those who follow the political campaigns closely know that this week’s Michigan primary is critical to the Romney campaign. For weeks, opinion polls showed former Senator Rick Santorum with a commanding lead over Romney, but over the past week the Romney campaign had worked diligently to close the gap and even take the lead in his home state. The campaign was poised to seize control of the race with a much-hyped (and even oversold) economic speech with the Detroit Economic Club at the Westin Hotel… …and then the event got moved to the cavernous Ford Field. Of course, normally when an event sells out so much that you need to move to a bigger venue, that’s a GOOD thing. But when the Secret Service had a problem with the layout of Ford Field’s atrium, the only location left was the field itself, and during set-up, the reporters took a look at the scene and started sharing pictures on Twitter.
Posted on February 27, 2012 By David Wescott
Categories  Online Reputation Social Media Best Practices U.S. Elections | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Getting Transparent About Privacy

YesterdayPresident Obama unveiled his Administration’s white paper on online privacy. Among other things, the much-anticipated document - Consumer Data Privacy in a Networked World – calls on Congress to adopt a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights and charges industry to do more self-policing but under the watchful enforcement of federal regulators. While the white paper has been in the works for months, yesterday’s event tops off a number of recent events that have served as a somewhat predictable trigger and a flashpoint for a broader public dialogue around the protection of online consumer privacy.
Posted on February 24, 2012 By Virtual Vantage Points
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@SuperTuesday 2.0

Four years ago, the team at APCO Worldwide decided to do something that was rather new and creative for its time. We set up a Twitter account called @SuperTuesday and began tweeting links to news stories about the 2008 presidential campaign; we also held an event in New York City where we live-tweeted election returns from all the Super Tuesday primary and caucus states. Some of our political experts such as Marc Ginsberg and Cassandra Pye live-blogged that evening as well. (I had some fun with it, too.) Twitter was still a bit of a novelty back then – while many early adopters were establishing themselves on the new social network, most journalists and politicos were still dismissing it as a gimmick or a vehicle for little more than trivial banter. The exercise was a helpful learning experience for all of us, the Super Tuesday event was great fun and the media attention we got was a bonus – but the people who paid attention to it seemed to focus more on the technology tool itself than the discussion we were trying to have on it. In 2008, we could have gotten almost as much attention simply by tweeting, “Hey, look – I’m on Twitter.”
Posted on February 23, 2012 By David Wescott
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