Decision ‘08

All Hail the Almighty Blogger

I tell you, if I get anymore powerful than I am right now, I might actually influence someone’s opinion on something one of these days! Nevertheless, bloggers, like all sentient beings, love their moments in the sun, and a couple of good chances to engage in a little self-congratulation have made themselves available lately. First, Jim Geraghty, in the Washington Times, looks at the role of blogs in the recent Supreme Court nomination struggles and concludes with a pithy, if dubious, conclusion:

Republicans can find strength and success by listening to their like-minded bloggers; Democrats can find strength and success by ignoring theirs.

The second half of that is probably true - the first proposition is a little dubious (witness the near-hysteria over the Muslim cartoons as an example).

Next up, Gerald Baker of the London Times joins the club:

You might be tempted to greet the arrival of yet another blog on your computer screen by concurring mournfully with the wisdom of one of the most underrated of American politicians, the late Morris Udall.

“Everything that can possibly be said has already been said,” the peerless member of congress from Arizona once opined in the middle of a seemingly interminable debate. “The problem is, not everyone has said it yet.”

There is not, as far as I am aware, an opinion shortage in the English-speaking world. I have seen no news reports of angry, comment-starved citizens roaming the streets, demanding to know what they are supposed to think about American strategic hegemony, the state of the health service in Britain, the outlook for global interest rates or whether last night’s TV was worse than the night before’s . There is no plan for the G8, as far as I know, to increase supplies of the observations of armchair pundits to the world’s polemically malnourished.

So to venture into the teeming, infinitely-expanding universe known as the blogosphere, displaying serious intent only to add to the proliferating verbiage, requires at least some explanation, if not an outright apology on my part.

The only defence I can offer is this. Blogging has simply become an essential component of modern public dialogue. Not to blog is to leave oneself outside that ever-broadening conversation.

Five years ago I didn’t know what a blog was. Today, I hesitate to admit it but I probably spend more hours in a day reading blogs than doing any other single activity. And, though some readers of my regular columns in The Times (Tuesdays on economics and finance, Fridays on everything else) might choke on hearing me say this, I’ve become better informed for it. I’ve never written anything in my life that could not have been improved by having had more pairs of eyes on it. Blogs provide the best means technology has yet devised to maximise that scrutiny.

Well said, sir, and welcome aboard…

5 Responses to “All Hail the Almighty Blogger”

1 Dennis Says:
February 9th, 2006 at 4:30 pm
Regarding Geraghty’s argument, I would say the main advantage for Republicans is there’s no 800-lbs. gorilla on the right side of the blogosphere. If you’re a Democratic politician looking for blog cred, you go to Kos. Maybe you sprinkle some attention on Atrios or Josh Marshall, but for the most part, Kos is where everybody goes. It’s one-stop shopping, just like seeking labor votes by going to the AFL-CIO or seeking black votes by going to the NAACP.

Now where does a Republican politician go to get the attention of bloggers? There’s Glenn Reynolds, but he’s a libertarian not interested in organizing the masses the way Kos is. For more conservative and hardcore partisan puposes, there’s Red State, but they’re not in Kos’ league in terms of sheer numbers. There’s any number of other conservative blogs that revolve around the thoughts of one or two main writers (e.g. Malkin, Capt. Ed, Powerline, our own beloved Decision ‘08, etc.). But none of them dominate the conversation on the right the way Kos does on the left.

If Republicans find strength from “their” blogs, it’s probably because there’s no one dominant voice to tell them what to do and how to do it. For Democrats, they’ve got the Kossacks screaming “GO LEFT!” over and over in their ears and drowning out most of the other voices.
2 dmac Says:
February 9th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
Ah, Mo Udall - one of the best people to have served our country, at least as far as politics are concerned. Still remember his failed Presidential bid, when he was done in by the Peanut Man. He also was one of the leaders of the environmental movement, and gave it some much -needed legitimacy in the early days of the 70’s.

I don’t see too many like Mo out there in the Dem’s political wilderness these days - maybe someone will step up to claim the mantle.
3 megapotamus Says:
February 9th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
“Democrats can find strength and success by ignoring theirs. ”

Ah, but they can’t. Even if the Senate and Presidential Dems were aghast at the Kossification of their party they would be abandoning mighty rivers of lucre not to mention giving the one-finger salute to the activist element of their base by ANY sort of Sistah Solja-ism. In any case, it is obvious in that of most of the bigs; Pelosi, Reid, Kerryennedy are troo bellheavin’ Kossacks. How much of the Kerry vote can they count on in ‘08? ‘06 will give us a notion and I predict LOW turnout across the board and no transfer of majority in either house. Some sane (ish) Dems are talking up Tennessee’s Bredesden for the Big Chair. Fat chance. Hell never reach escape velocity in the primaries. The DUers idea of an “electable” candidate is Sir John of Davos. Dean is their presumptive heir and he is for Dean. No party man, he. Given his position, that is a damning fact. For them, I mean. I luv the guy!
4 dmac Says:
February 9th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
Here’s something interesting with regards to what Bush said today:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/02/20060209-2.html

Why are they revealing this now? I would hazard a guess to influence the NSA/FISA debate. If that’s the case here, then quite well played.
5 Karl Maher Says:
February 9th, 2006 at 7:20 pm
I agree with most of what Geraghty, but found his assertion that blogs now “set the debate” in Washington a little over the top.