Liberal leadership sites in the same boat now

Bob Rae’s formal launch of his bid to become next federal Leader of the Opposition was accompanied by The Globe and Mail publishing his campaign manifesto Coming out of the Liberal closet behind the subscriber wall, and the Canadian Federation of Students were quick on the protest march with recollections of the “elitist vision for higher education” practiced by the then-NDP Premier of Ontario. However, failing to have his own website ready to coincide with his announcement certainly doesn’t help transmit the idea that Rae’s message has transformed from his brutal recession-era reign at Queen’s Park, and the sections that could be hacked for pre-launch viewing behind the curtain don’t seem too inspired anyhow. Blue Blogging Soapbox blogger Paul Synnott made the effort to plough across the web presences of the starting lineup of Liberal contenders, wondering what became of their confab last month with Joe Trippi – architect of Howard Dean’s seminal MoveOn.org campaign – who offered his insights into playing open source politics: “I think most of the candidates must have been sleeping.” Given the overall dreariness conveyed by this Liberal field of ten candidates or more, perhaps they’d have been better served by a consistently awful template a la MySpace, if not being forced to compress their entire message to a single page, rather than expecting passive visitors to point and click through several different sections that are rarely distinguishable. The more dynamic website from leadership hopeful Carolyn Bennett involves plenty of navigation through sections paying homage to those earthier communication methods like newspapers, dayplanners and postcards, while the policy platform gets depicted via a photo of a laptop computer screening PowerPoint, and “blog” entries are scrolled on the screen of a Blackberry – a device Bennett relied upon for rebuttal points relayed by her campaign manager during a January debate – reflecting the personality a politician who’s been successful at connecting to women whose most intimate mass media consumption occurs with a waiting room copy of Chatelaine. Not like Rae is doing himself much of a favour, as observed by blogger CalgaryGrit, by attaching himself to a slogan like “Call me Bob” – there’s just something about those three words reminiscent of a goofy c. 1990 disposition, suggesting that Rae oughta put his big round spectacles back on. Gerard Kennedy, who hasn’t forsaken the eyewear yet, could quite handily assert his potential to be Prime Minister by giving the impression that he’s got a modem at home.