We in the blogosphere write and comment a lot on what we want from candidates and elected officials. Things are seldom a one way street however; other than voting, what is our part of the bargain? What should we be doing during campaign season? If our candidates are elected, then what? Do we just sit around until the next election? I asked Joe Hoeffel this question in the most recent interview and he gave this answer
Q.: In the bargain between elected officials and voters, what are the responsibilities of each?
A.: Great question with a simple answer. Voters must stay informed, and officials must stay honest.
What do you think? Are we making a bargain with candidates? If so, what is our part? If you have your own blog and are interested, write on a posting on this topic sometime next week and let me know when your posting is up. I’ll compile a list of all of them on Friday. If you don't have your own blog, leave a comment on this or another participating blog. Let's see what we can come up with.
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9 comments:
Have not explicitly thought of this, but still have some ideas I need to let gel. Will post later on it (and now have some mental stuff to percolate during what promises to be a slow work day)
Having recently become a candidate and formerly a blogger I have found the transistion to be somewhat difficult. I have contacted bloggers with great leads that I would normal have posted myself or done the investigation of and they were interested by extremely lazy. One blogger asked me if I had the link to the alleged wrong-doing by a current official he even mentioned that he went as far as to "google" it. It made me realize that despite the great deal of work the blogger's do its often idle in nature and extremely deriviative I hate to say this about my peeps but hey now that the shoes on the other foot I'm extremely torn.
Hey anonymous! You must be hanging around too many liberal bloggers from Philly. Just kidding AboveAverageJane :)
Anonymous,
Most bloggers are hobbyists, writing in the wee hours of the morning or squeezing it in over lunch. They may not have the time right then to investigate things. I've missed some good stories because when they were hot I was swamped and just posting "blah" stuff, when I had the time to fully investigate the moment had passed. Or maybe you were sending the material to people who had a slightly different focus. Or maybe they didn't like your tone. Or maybe they are lazy. Hard to tell. When people are working for free, though, there's not much you can do to motivate them.
Jane,
I took a shot at this...I hope it helps.
http://liberaldoomsayer.blogspot.com/2006/06/what-must-we-do.html
Some dude named Rousseau wrote a book on this. It's required reading in poli sci classes across America.
I finally got a post together:
http://thesamandbeckybooshow.com/2006/06/02/youre-not-the-boss-of-me-now-oh-wait/
The best I can come up with right now, but probably by far not the best response you'll get out of the bunch But I did try...
I write a blog because I believe that that are things that need to be said. That my voice speaks for people and viewpoints that are not heard. I write a blog to inspire people to take action and to accomplish great things. I write to be a voice of positivism in a sea of nihilism.
Most of all, I write a blog because I believe Philadelphia is a great place and there are simply not enough people around telling other people what a great place it is. And conversely, not enough people shouting down all the mooks, whether ESPN or Joe Vento, who have made it their business to defame Philadelphia and bring us down.
So, in short, my answer to your question is that when there are no candidates and there are no elections, blogs do what they should be doing in the first place - they should be a source of ideas. Blogs should help set the agenda.
After all, it's abundantly clear that our politicians and leaders and neither the ability or the inclination to set forth any ideas of their own.
I missed the deadline but I just put something up now. I don't know how to send a trackback here so I'll leave the link here.
Now I'm off to read the other answers.
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