“An Outsider’s Campaign Diary,” by George B. Martin. ISBN 978-1-60264-662-9. 605 pages. Hardcover. $32.95.
The successful 2008 presidential campaign by Barack Obama used the internet as a campaign tool on a scale previously unseen. Thanks to the campaign’s savvy use of the internet, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans made financial contributions to the campaign. In addition, the campaign blog facilitated a lively public conversation. Thousands of Obama supporters joined one or more blogging groups engaged in discussions regarding public policy, personal feelings regarding Obama and other candidates, and related subjects.
One blogger, George Martin, has compiled his observations, often with feedback from other bloggers. The majority of his essays were written during the campaign, but the blog posts continued at a less prolific pace through the first two years of the Obama presidency. An Outsider’s Campaign Diary, like other diaries, reflects the author’s observations and attitudes on a given day. It is significantly different from a narrative of the campaign written after the fact, because those books are written with the full knowledge of the outcome. Unlike books written by professional journalists or academics, who usually must at least pretend to be objective, the Diary is written by a declared Obama supporter, but not a completely uncritical one.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
George Martin was born in 1952 and is a life-long resident of the Chicago area. He is a graduate of Coe College and earned an MBA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Mr. Martin is the house accountant in a textile distribution business which has been in his family for over seventy years. He is a small businessman, although in the opinion of his doctor, he should try to get a little bit smaller. He became active early in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, writing many blog postings, in which he used the deliberately self-important moniker, “The Bard of Wilmette.” Unlike most political writers, Mr. Martin claims no expertise on any subject, but rather is just some guy with a keyboard. He has lived most of his life in Wilmette, a Chicago suburb, and to the best of his knowledge, nobody else has laid claim as “The Bard” in that community. He has been married since 1980 to his first wife, and is the father of two sons who are now in their twenties.
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