"I ghost-wrote letters to the editor for the McCain campaign"

[Douglas Carpenter]

I ghost-wrote letters to the editor for the McCain campaign

By Margriet Oostveen

" 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.

snip: "Sept. 24, 2008 | "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."

Place them? I may be wrong, but I thought that in the USA only a newspaper's editors decided that.

"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."

No newspaper can refuse a stream of articulate expressions of support, is the thought behind it. "This way, we will always get into some letters column."

It is the day after Sarah Palin's speech at the Republican convention. Today, she is our main subject. The others are already enthusiastically hammering their keyboards. I am struggling with a tiny writer's block. "Dear Editor ..."

Phil Tuchman has handed out model letters, and talking points and quotes from Sarah Palin's speech. But whom do I want to be?

Let's loosen up my fingers a little first -- and my principles, too. Am I actually allowed to make up letters? At the moment, it seems to be the only way to demonstrate how this is done in a campaign. So yes. I start practicing attractive sentences about Sarah Palin:

"Her biggest plus to me is that, besides being amazingly smart and qualified, she managed to remain a woman like us. She is the PTA hockey moms. She is the working mothers of special needs children. She is every caring mother of a challenging teenager."

Her pregnant daughter Bristol (17) is not a talking point. A talking point is her son Track (19), who will be deployed to Iraq.

"And most of all, she is just like any mother of a child who deploys to Iraq in the service of this country."

link to full article:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/09/24/mccain_letters/?source=newsletter

.

[grannie4peace]

1. they've been hitting my youtube site ,too. that's what i think!!!!!

[chknltl]

2. I'd be willing to bet that C-SPAN is being McC-SPAMMED too. nt

[malaise]

8. Of course they have phone banks

for CSpan.

[AndyA]

3. It's all a fantasy, a game, to them.

The fact that everything is falling apart because of their bad choices, policies, and greed is of no concern. So, make up a story about a child lost in the war in Iraq, and show that you support McSame even though your pain is immense.

What bullshit. And what an insult to the families who truly have made the ultimate sacrifice.

[WritersBlock]

5. BINGO! Yep, it's all just a game, played so they can demonstrate their "cleverness" and

sense of superiority. They don't give a rat's ass about the fact that the country's going to hell in a handbasket; just as long as they can bolster their own egos, they're happy.

[magellan]

4. So they've basically made LTTEs worthless as gauges of public opinion too

Repubs wouldn't know real democracy if it ran up and slapped them in the face. And if they hadn't trampled it, it would.

[elizfeelinggreat]

6. from your link

This is rich:

"Gail Gitcho, a spokeswoman for the McCain campaign, said that Oostveen did not properly identify herself to campaign workers in Arlington. "She did not represent herself as a journalist to the people who work in the mid-Atlantic office." Ostveen, who also wrote a column about an earlier stint phone-banking for the McCain campaign, says she twice explained to different workers in the Arlington campaign office that she might be using her experiences as a volunteer in her columns for the NRC Handelsblad."


That would have stopped them from showing her the ugly side so ... it's all HER fault.

[Indenturedebtor]

7. Win at all costs... again proving that Pukes are human garbage n/t

[TuxedoKat]

9. It would be interesting

if there was an easy way to see if these letters are reused in different papers throughout the US, but with slight changes and different names. I wouldn't be surprised.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

12. Yes, some of them are just too slick

Google can be your friend in that case, because if they're part of an Astroturf campaign, they can be found that way.

[LeftinOH]

10. I enjoy writing- but I could not, in good conscience, even do this for a candidate I liked...n/t

[Gold Metal Flake]

11. But they never pay people to post on internet forums.

No, that is where they draw the line, right? Sure.

[Douglas Carpenter]

13. one kick for the next shift

[ThoughtCriminal]

14. I've busted a few Astro-turf letter writers

Google can often expose them when they get lazy and recycle the same letter to multiple newpapers. I usually take one phrase that has that patented GOP syntax (like "President Bush has shown remarkable leadership..."), put it in quotes and Google it.

The letters that claim some personal experience are especially satisfying to expose. Gee whiz, what a coincidence that the same week, 7 other people in the state wrote letter to a local newspaper and claimed to have saved the exact same amount in their monthly prescription costs thanks to President Bush's Medicare Prescription plan and the only thing different about them is that they have different names and live in different towns!