Policy, Smallicy. Who cares.
Which of the candidates has the best website? That's the important question.
Originally written for the Noise about 2 weeks ago:
Reviewing the Presidential Candidates...Websites
I admit it; besides being a political geek, I’m also a web geek. I make my living being a web geek. So in the last election (2006), I ended up voting for the candidates with the best website. Going to the candidate’s websites and seeing what they said about themselves and their plans was the best way to figure out what they were about, and who to vote for. Because honestly, how much media coverage do you think there is for the Arizona Corporation Commissioner race?
I did the same thing in the 2004 election on the national level. What the candidates were about was more obvious in that election, but visiting each candidates website helped solidify impressions in some cases, or refute them in other cases. I didn’t see any reason to trust Bush about Kerry or Kerry about Bush, but I could trust Kerry about Kerry, and Bush about Bush.
Given what a mess this primary season has been on both sides, I thought I’d review not the candidates, but their websites. So without further ado, let’s go look at their websites:
Hillary Clinton: www.hillaryclinton.com
Hillary’s website starts with a splash page for you to signup as a supporter. This kind of stuff has always annoyed me. Its bad website design because you really have to hook people in with the first page. Putting a page in front of your website actually decreases the number of people who will read your site by a huge amount; it’s counter-productive. Especially a form that wants your name, email and zip code as most people won’t read down to see that you can click a link to skip that step and go directly to the website. Once you’re there, the website seems geared towards people who are already supporters. So as someone looking to be convinced that Hillary should get my vote, I started out annoyed.
However, Hillary has a pretty good website overall. She has a pretty good biography, and her take on the issues is presented well, with position outlines supplemented with speeches. Her most detailed issue is on Health Care, you get the feeling that her health care platform paper was cribbed from some 1,000 page piece of legislation that has been sitting in her desk drawer for the last 8 years. Key speeches are presented with both transcripts and occasionally video, and you can read about what Hillary is doing every day. One interesting feature of her site are the related sister sites: hillaryhub.com and facts.hillaryhub.com. These sites are devoted to news about Hillary and spin. Her site links to a YouTube channel where video bits are getting posted almost daily.
Of the 3 Democratic candidates I looked at Hillary’s website was probably the best.
Barack Obama: www.barackobama.com
The first time you go to Obama’s website, you get the same annoying signup form as on Hillary’s site with a cloyingly sweet picture of his family. The second time you go to his website, it mercifully skips his signup form, which is probably good because the picture on that form is just awful.
Obama’s site is very pretty and has very nice graphics. They’re almost too nice though. I was reminded of the time I was in Italy and I was in my hotel room for 3 days before I realized that the strange metal sculpture on the back of a door wasn’t a sculpture at all: it was a coat hook. You can take design too far some times, and at times I found Obama’s site a puzzle to navigate. It’s a pretty icon, but what does it mean?
Obama’s biography section was weak, no surprise there, and for someone who is famous for his eloquence, there were few speeches and those presented only as a transcript only...or are they? It turns out that the best way to get access to Barack’s speeches is through something called BarackTV. It’s easily the best feature of Obama’s website.
But video can only take you so far. We have complicated issues facing us as a country, so I want some position papers. Heading over to the issues section on his website at first glance his take on the issues seemed deep, but when I downloaded them and read them, they reminded me of John “I have a plan...to have a plan” Kerry. That is, his positions talked mostly about what problems he saw rather than what he was going to do about it.
I would guess that Obama’s website is geared towards getting visitors to watch him speak. Since I wasn’t willing to do that, I wasn’t overly swayed by his site.
John Edwards: www.johnedwards.com
John Edwards has the same annoying signup thing as Hillary and Obama but his picture isn’t quite as annoying as Obama’s. Like Obama, visiting the site again lets you skip the form. Which doesn’t quite help, because the first thing I saw on the home page was a slideshow image complaining about being ignored by the media in favor of Hillary/Obama. Sorry John, but you’re just coming across as whiny.
Something about the color scheme of the site just grated on me, but I persevered. I was momentarily hopeful when I saw a link on the main page to his 80-page “book” The Plan to Build One America (quotes are mine not his. When did 80 pages become a book?). After downloading and reading it though, I found it mostly content free. It was better then Obama’s, but still too vague to mean much. You can tunnel down through the issues on the website, and they’re well connected to speeches and debate questions.
The best feature of his website is the blog section, and Edwards has internet links to pretty much every social networking site on the planet.
So a fairly good effort, but somehow, not very inspiring.
John McCain: www.johnmccain.com
Same old signup thing, though McCain’s has a giant “Donate Today” button on it, and the skip link is less prominent. Once you get in the site is very easy on the eyes; its probably the best-designed and most usable of all of the websites I reviewed. One thing that especially stood out was the use of sidebars; as I poked around on the site, related information to what I was looking at would be well presented adjacent to what I was browsing. McCain had a lot of “best of” out of all the websites: He had the best biography, presented in both text and video; the best presentation of his views on health care; and the presentation on Iraq. Additionally, he had two unique features: he was the only candidate to have sections and content specifically geared towards Undecided voters, and comments on his blog are open, even people who don’t like him are welcome to post. I thought that was pretty ballsy, but that’s similar to how he’s been conducting his campaign: all town hall meetings all the time.
Given how he’s been running his campaign I would have expected him to have videos of every single town hall meeting available, but since none of the other candidates have seen fit to do that, I can’t really criticize him for it. Best Republican site.
Rudy Giuliani: www.joinrudy2008.com
Rudy didn’t have the annoying signup splash screen. Instead, you go directly to the home page. Once there, if anything, his website reminds me of one of the TV network websites like abc.com. That is, he seems more like a television channel then any of the other candidates. Want to know about the issues? You have to watch a speech, because he doesn’t have much text about the issue.
So at first glance his website seems content free for someone like me. But if you dig deeper, you can find a gem: The news items, press releases and blog posts are all tagged, so you can click a tag and instantly see all the content on the site relating to that subject which includes press releases, speeches, and blog posts.
So perhaps there’s better coverage of the issues, but you’ll have to dig for it.
Mitt Romney: www.mittromney.com
Mitt’s site started with a slightly less obnoxious splash page with prominent “Contribute” and “Volunteer” buttons, though the “skip to site” button was well labeled. Once there, the site is somewhat generic, but you really get a sense that Mitt is involved with his family: the blog is called ‘5 Brothers’ and host posts from Mitt, his brothers, and his wife. Unlike the rest of the candidates blogs, which are obviously written by staffers, the Romney blog feels like one of those “holiday newsletters” you get folded up inside Christmas cards.
Mitt’s site has a pretty good TV section, with clips sorted well in to section, and lots of them. Not quite as good as Obama’s, but fairly well done. The issues section is mostly an overview with a video for each, but Mitt has some interesting charts.
One gets the impression that Mitt’s website is geared towards getting people to feel like “part of the Romney family". I wasn’t really impressed with his issue coverage, they felt like overviews; even worse then Obama.
Mike Huckabee: www.mikehuckabee.com
Of all the candidates, Mike Huckabee had the worst website. His website was practically content-free on the issues, and the most prominent picture on his website is of him and Chuck Norris. I found it hard to take him seriously as a candidate before I saw his website, I take him less seriously now. The only reason I even looked at his site was because my editor insisted.
What I would like to see:
While every candidate has links to all the social networking sites and YouTube, I don’t think any of the campaigns have really leveraged them effectively. Meanwhile, video is king! Every candidate had lots of videos on their website. Some were well integrated into the website, some were just, well, there. This is clearly the YouTube election, but its not yet the MySpace election.
Except for McCain, who as I noted above allows pretty open commenting, once you enter a candidates website don’t expect to see a lot of disagreement with the candidate. Most comments are filtered and restricted to being positive on the candidates websites. That makes most of the websites seem stilted and artificial. I’m not sure it wouldn’t be better to dive in like McCain has done, and link not only to supporters, but detractors as well. Long term, what you really want is to have every stump speech in every location available on the candidates website or YouTube. It’s free, and why not? Given that I prefer the town hall format to canned speeches anyways, I think this would help extend the discussion to everyone. Yeah, it’s harder to maintain a “focused message”, but I think American’s are immune to “focused messages” these days anyways.
The interesting thing really about all the websites is really how much they reflect the candidates personalities: Hillary is all geared up to confront spin, and her issue coverage is as dry as a legal brief; Obama is all great design and looks, but no substance, and Edwards while more substantial then Obama, is uninspiring. On the Republican side, McCain seems most concerned that you understand where he’s coming from and why; Guiliani seems like a TV commerical for a fast food restaurant, and Romney is all about his big family.
Meanwhile, if the election were based on websites, I would have to call McCain and Hillary the frontrunners.
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