Blogging their views

MUMBAI: When David Cameron, Tory leader, visited India earlier this year, his constituents were able to follow his adventures involving folk dancers, factory openings and the Delhi Metro as they unfolded, through his live blog.

Cameron is not alone. British Chancellor Gordon Brown’s blog confesses to a lasting admiration for Uncle Jo Stalin while Pervez Musharraf reveals his taste for “well-stitched clothes from anywhere.” If blogs are the way we now talk to each other, politicians have joined in the conversation. 

The recent mushrooming of politician bloggers is an indication of the clout and reach the blogosphere has acquired in its brief life. Driven by a need to appear in touch with popular tastes and technology, leaders from across the world are logging on, churning out chatty entries that range from the bizarre to the banal. 

The A-list of politicians-who-blog thus includes Senator Hillary Clinton, French presidential hopeful Segolene Royal and Iranian President Ahmadinejad. 

The raw newness of this encounter is painfully apparent even on the savviest sites. Readers trawling through the blog of Britain’s young, ‘with-it’ environment minister are informed in official tones that their exchanges are being monitored for research. Soon after a wide-eyed entry gushing over the “revelation” that blogging has been, Cameron’s blog ran out of steam.

Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s debut post offered readers an intimate view of his early struggles, documenting even the nosebleed he defied to clear his university exam. After a long silence, he recently made a comeback with a lengthy entry peppered with vitriolic attacks on the UN and the United States. His second post comes after an eight week gap.

He put the delay down to his preferring to spend all his allotted blog time reading visitor’s comments “personally.” With links from 1,700 other blogs and over 2,00,000 participants on his online vote, Ahmadinejad stands a good chance of being listed in the top 100 blogs by Technorati, a prominent tracking site.

The most promising political blogger in cyberspace, however, is Pervez Musharraf. While he does not have a full-fledged blog yet, the General maintains a personal page on his official website. From the desk of the President is a racy account of his life, which opens with how he “almost got thrown out (of the Pakistan Military Academy) for some disciplinary lapse.”

He was repeatedly saved from such embarrassments by fate, once in the guise of a timely war with India. Musharraf is a natural at the tone of artless prattle that characterises blogs, frankly characterising his elevation to army chief as “a miracle” and recalling his “bluntness and indiscipline” as a bachelor.

In contrast, the clinical detachment of Hillary Clinton’s Blog for Hope is matched only by its extreme political correctness. Her measured pronouncements, while in keeping with the ‘health expert’ tag her blog comes with, make it about as exhilarating as a hospital log. Similarly, stray ‘drunk and disorderly’ comments are the sole entertaining reads on Gordon Brown’s blog, which includes high points like, “You might have heard my moving speech about security in modern Britain.” 

The response of citizen bloggers to this political advance has been mixed. Some are openly hostile to the takeover of the last politician-free space, exhorting comrades to “Run, run as fast as you can.” Others have been more hospitable, giving out helpful hints and wondering just how long it will take President Bush to get a blog. 

Clearly, blogging as political activism has come a long way since the pioneering Blog for America. The 2003 ‘netroots’ movement had unexpectedly thrust Democrat Howard Dean to the forefront of the race for the Presidential ticket. While that particular campaign was unsuccessful, if the likes of Senator Clinton and Segolene Royal swing their respective elections, bloggers may soon, indeed, rule.