I've been following the blog some at techPresident which is a conversation about what the '08 presidential candidates are doing on the web. I found this particular post on online transparency as it relates to two scheduled house party events that both Edwards and Obama are incorporating into their campaign (both next week).
As the situation stands, Obama has 8 parties scheduled within 25 miles of my house in Franconia, Edwards has 1; Obama has 19 scheduled within 25 miles of Concord, Edwards has 2; Obama has 5 within 25 miles of Portsmouth, Edwards has none; Obama 11 in Keene, Edwards 3; Manchester 27 for Obama, 5 for Edwards; Nashua 5 for Edwards, 36 for Obama. You see where this is going.
That kind of inside baseball is generally under tight wraps, especially if you're the Edwards campaign. The staff and the field people know how many parties are planned, but they also know enough not to go blabbing it to anyone. Now they don't have to.
This is how intelligence has always been gathered - good information is readily available, sometimes just staring you in the face. And these days, there's a lot more of it.
A couple of things really jumped out at me when I read this. The first is this is going to be a presidential campaign like none we've ever seen. Every campaign has made some sort of effort to to draw in the internet crowd with their websites (some way more successful than others). The second thing that jumped out at me is the last line. There is a lot more information out there, some of it is not too hard to find either. Our society is better for this too...especially when you're talking about politics. Transparency is a beautiful thing.
