A Revolution (Ron Paul) Goes Matrix

(UPDATE (10/5/07 at 9:55pm EST): The post below is about the Ron Paul's campaign use of transparency as a tactic. Today, they held a massive online fundraising drive and used this tactic to spur minute-by-minute progress. They report having raised today, more money than any GOP candidate on any given single day . As of this update, they report having raised $3.4 million.)

Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) has been slugging it out for over a year now as a GOP Presidential contender. He has been at every televised debate and most of the micro-forums that were an open invitation. He's raised nearly as much money as U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) in the last two fiscal quarters.

Paul holds a special place right now, as the only voice for the anti-War Right in the GOP.

While his poll numbers have yet to skyrocket (they are ticking up from zero), some say his trends are in the right direction. Enter RonPaulGraphs.com.

The site, run by a self-described nerd, is taking advantage of an uniquely open-source aspect of the Ron Paul campaign. This is not a campaign site, but a site run by a supporter/backer of Mr. Paul's. On the availability of the data, the site owner writes:

"For those who don't know, the Ron Paul campaign has decided to run a real time feed of the online campaign donations. Having this level of transparency is going to take the Ron Paul campaign to new levels."

This is a valid point. Transparency, especially in sources of giving, is something each candidate only needs the will to do. Proving an applied central tenant of Paul's libertarian outlook, laws don't make campaign's moral, candidate's do.

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It's hard to argue this move is a bad thing. In fact, the opposite. So why haven't we read a major newspaper editorials in praise of Ron Paul's public accountability? It is worth noting the mainstream media haven't noticed and heralded this as an example of what any do-good(er) can do. While some of the more "leading" campaigns talk about change or taking on Washington they choose to campaign in the status-quo.

Open-source aspects to campaigning caught the media's eye when it was an online contest by U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) to pick her campaign's theme song. While the pick-a-song contest is a great short-term engagement tactic, it's a gimmick compared to publishing, in real time, campaign fundraising data. In today's data-driven times, it is not a question of resources or labor to bring this information in virtual real-time to the public square.

Note, I would find it odd to bring the same level of transparency to the spending side of a campaign. One, it would be more difficult to define spending on a complex national campaign, in real time (there is not one daily debit). Second, and bigger point, there is a loss of tactical and possible strategic advantage. Letting your rivals know, in real time, where you're adding staff, buying more TV, traveling, etc., is not a pathway to victory. In this instant-age everyone knows most of this stuff pretty quick but accelerating it is a needless self-inflicted wound.

But good-government advocates will note the difference between spending and funding. It is a distinction with a difference. A candidate may win an election based upon how they spend, but they may be persuaded in their policy by who funds their spending.

If any of the "leading" candidate's did what Ron Paul is doing, they would control the message on fundraising and kill the hungry process reporting that occurs four times a year which dominates for nearly two weeks the campaign's ability to discuss policy and make promises and pledges. Oh wait!

In all seriousness, the set of matrix graphs and data collected at RonPaulGrpahs.com helps keep the Ron Paul folks fired-up. And one would guess if you're on the fundraising team of John McCain it keeps you motivated as well. They can literally watch the echo of those approaching footsteps.

The public accountability in practice, as exampled, by the Paul campaign is much better than a promise of change. It is change.

Both fields could learn from Paul's open-source approach to campaigning and implement their own authentic, yet substantive, form of engagement and transparency.


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