the other race
The Websites.

Martin
It's now been 912 hours since Paul Martin last posted to his blog. Sometime on Friday evening he will hit the 1000 hour mark.

I decided to look at his links page, to see what sorts of sites Martin (or whomever is responsible for doing his website) deemed important enough to link to.
It's a very businessy website, which I think describes Paul fairly well. When I saw him on Sunday on TV, he appeared to be all business, no smiles. He said nothing interesting, certainly nothing that could possibly get him into any hot water in the press. Still I think that the World Bank and the Romanow Commision links are a bit much.

The main site is visually appealing, it is set up to look like a newspaper front page, along the lines of the Onion magazine. Unfortunately the actual stories are as unappealing as the links site. One of the headlines reads "Martin challenges “conventional wisdom,” asks Canadians to do the same".
What the heck is that supposed to mean anyway? I think that most people who come across his site would probably prefer something a little more human, less dry. Would the opposite of a dry political website be a wet site?

I'm not going to try to coin any new terms, but a "wet site" would be one that contained humour, less businessy, with the intention of gaining the interest of a visitor, so that that visitor will want to look around a bit on the site, maybe click on a few of the links and see what else the candidate has to say. This doesn't mean that Paul needs to start telling jokes, but keeping his blog up-to-date would be a good start. And get rid of some of those links on the links page, the ones that won't be of any interest to the average Liberal party member. Perhaps add a link to Warren Kinsella's site.
Anyway, I'm not here to give advice to Paul on campaigning, I'm sure he's got people on staff who know a heck of a lot more than I do. I should mention that I did like the picture of Paul perusing his dad's campaign stuff at Queen's University. Not really moving, but perhaps it could be described as touching.

Manley
Yeah see here's an example of a site that appears less businessy, although I'm sure it is intended to serve exactly the same purpose as the Martin website. Certainly the language is less dry. I'll do the links page again, since I roasted Martin on his links. Basically, Manley's (I keep writing Martin and having to correct it) links are more oriented towards what a casual visitor might be interested in looking at. Newspapers, and even a link to The Weather Network. Those are the things you want to put on a website which is geared towards average Canadians, and average Liberal Party members. It's not as polished as the Martin site, but definitely better suited to it's audience.
Manley's site isn't exactly inspiring either (not that any personal political campaign website ever is), but it's much easier to read without falling asleep. On the downside, the site doesn't have nearly the depth of the Martin site, not as many articles, not much to keep the visitor on the site.

Interestingly, on the JohnManley.com site (his non leadership page), Manley has a little video in which he speaks for about a minute. A very nice addition to that webpage, although everything he says is very "fortune-cookie-ish".

Sheila Copps
Well it wasn't very hard to do the Sheila Copps site, her campaign site is fairly shallow, with a grand total of 12 links (and a couple are repeated). The "About Sheila" link leads to her life story. It's the "Sheila's Vision for Canada" that leads to her campaign stuff, there are 7 or 8 documents on that page. The site itself is fairly well done, and in fact it looks like it's probably done by the same folks who did the Manley site.
The language on the site is a lot less dry than the Martin site, and like the Manley site the language is very campaigny.


Now, if I was a Liberal and I had my 'druthers, I'd be trying to get the Justice Minister, Martin Cauchon into the race. He'd be my first choice if I was a Liberal.