"I Ghost-Wrote Letters To The Editor For The McCain Campaign"

[Better Believe It]

Salon.com
September 24, 2008

I ghost-wrote letters to the editor for the McCain campaign
I spent a morning in John McCain's Virginia campaign headquarters ghost-writing letters to the editor for McCain supporters to sign. I even pretended to have a son in Iraq.
By Margriet Oostveen

Editor's note: The following article was originally published on Sept. 13 in Dutch in the newspaper NRC Handelsblad, where Margriet Oostveen writes a weekly column called "Message From Washington." Oostveen has volunteered in various political campaigns and then written about the experience. She has worked for both John McCain and Barack Obama in this election cycle.

"You can be whoever you want to be," says an inviting Phil Tuchman. "You can be a beggar or a millionaire. A mom or a husband. Whatever. You decide!"

I volunteer in political campaigns now and then. After a series of outings for Obama and a first mission as a phone banker for John McCain, I returned to McCain's headquarters in Arlington, Va. The offer was too alluring to delay -- they wanted to put me into action as a ghostwriter. Next to commercials and phone banking, writing letters to the editor is the most important method of the McCain campaign to attract voters. At least that is what's written in the guidelines that McCain campaign worker Phil Tuchman presents to me.

Today he is training six ghostwriters. What on earth is the appeal of McCain for the former Soviet bloc? Last time I was here, an exuberant Polish guy was phone banking next to me. Today, a Russian in yellow suspenders is shimmering at the same table, looking just like an actor who is famous in the Netherlands for star turns as a genius who suppresses his dark side with painstaking self-control.

The assignment is simple: We are going to write letters to the editor and we are allowed to make up whatever we want -- as long as it adds to the campaign. After today we are supposed to use our free moments at home to create a flow of fictional fan mail for McCain. "Your letters," says Phil Tuchman, "will be sent to our campaign offices in battle states. Ohio. Pennsylvania. Virginia. New Hampshire. There we'll place them in local newspapers."

"We will show your letters to our supporters in those states," explains Phil. "If they say: 'Yeah, he/she is right!' then we ask them to sign your letter. And then we send that letter to the local newspaper. That's how we send dozens of letters at once."

Please read the entire article at:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/09/24/mccain_letters/

Click here to see guidelines, talking points and sample letters the McCain campaign gave her.

http://www.salon.com/news/primary_sources/2008/09/24/mccain_letters/

[myrna minx]

1. Good old fashioned Republican astro-turf.

:puke:

[voteearlyvoteoften]

2. Ok now I have to write a legit letter

Seriously pathetic