Just now I was reading that the Huffington Post has identified the author of the Hillary/1984 Macintorsh ad mashup. According to the HuffPo, the anonymous parkridge47 is actually Philip de Vellis who...
...was the Internet communications director for Sherrod Brown's 2006 Senate campaign, and who now works at Blue State Digital, a company created by members of Howard Dean's Internet Team.
According to MyDD's Breaking Blue, Mr. de Vellis' company, Blue State Digital, does the Obama website. While currently not a certainty, this sure does smell like sock puppetry.
Obviously, this isn't the first time sock puppetry has reared it's ugly head in politics and blogs. And it's only going to get worse and worse. Right now we're pretty adept at catching it but that's only because we're a bit more capable when it comes to using the internets. But these are smart people and they'll figure it out and fast. I imagine that by the time 2008 rolls around, every national campaign will be able to sock puppet without risk of discovery. (All it would really take, I imagine, would be to have the good sense to do it at HOME, not the office.)
So I propose a pledge for candidates and office holders - the Anti Sock Puppet Pledge.
The Anti- Sock Puppet Pledge
I believe the internet is a powerful new medium for communication with voters and supporters. Being honest and open with voters and supporters is one of my core principles. Therefore, neither I, my staff nor my surrogates – paid or unpaid – will publish content of any nature on the internet without complete and honest identification of the author or creator of the content and his or her relationship to me. I have instructed all of my staff and surrogates to follow this instruction and any staff member who disobeys it will immediately be fired. Any surrogate who disobeys this instruction will be disavowed by me and my campaign/office, will no longer be allowed to speak for my campaign/office, will not be eligible for future employment in any current or future campaign or office and will have all of his or her donations returned immediately.
Getting politicians to tie their hands with pledges is obviously difficult. But asking them to promise not to lie shouldn't be as unpalatable for them as asking them to put their schedules online or agree to campaign spending limits.