The John McCain campaign has invited bloggers to a conference call with the Arizona senator and Republican presidential candidate this afternoon with bloggers to discuss his recent trip to Iraq and his speech on the war today at Virginia Military Institute. I asked the McCain folks if an audio recording of the call would be made available online, and the answer I got was no.
That's a mistake. In addition to inviting bloggers to talk with McCain and write about it on their blogs, the McCain team ought to put the raw audio of the call on the campaign website, so that non-bloggers can listen to it. Bloggers who are on the call would link to the audio file, and blog readers as well as visitors to the campaign website would also be able to hear the discussion. That would be good for McCain because bloggers tend to ask better and less predictable questions than mainstream media reporters, and the resulting answers and discussion tend to be more interesting.
I'd also urge the McCain campaign to mesh the audio file with video of McCain on the phone, and upload it to the campaign website and YouTube.
ElephantBiz.com will post a complete prepared transcript of McCain's speech at VMI just as soon as his speech, set for 11:30 a.m. Eastern time today, is concluded. It's a good speech - I just read the embargoed transcript.
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