Do Political leaders need communityevangelists?

It must seem like a small thing to the folks at John Edwards now-mothballed campaign for the Democratic nomination, but it pains me that the staff, and John Edwards, simply dropped out of the Twitterverse without even a parting goodbye.

‘His’ last post from five months ago (I put ‘his’ in quotes, since he probably was a proxy, sock puppet, phoney-baloney, old marketing identity, anyway):

Twitter / johnedwards, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.

So, you opt to try to exploit the edglings by signing up to Twitter, and writing a blog, and all that newfangled web stuff, trying to mine the potential there with ersatz involvement and cheesy, inauthentic participation: cramming old one:many messaging into a conversationally rich environment.

Then, you drop out. And proof that it is totally bogus, you just stop. Bam. No ‘thanks for the memories’, no ‘see you in the funny papers’, and certainly no ongoing involvement, since after all, there really was no involvement involved.

Proof of old politics wolf in new politics sheep’s clothing: they assume the ways of the new social web revolution as a means to come into contact with us, but when they lose (and maybe when they win, as well?) they drop the pretense of involvement, and go back to whatever they really believe in. Which is clearly not this new emerging whatever-the-hell-it-is on the web.

They will try to exploit web culture for their own purposes, but they aren’t really engaged here.

What will Barack and Hilary do if and when their time comes, I wonder?

I haven’t tracked Edwards closely since he dropped out. I had endorsed him early on, but really don’t have much of a handle on him now, since among other things ‘he’s’ not updating me via Twitter, and he’s not on the op-ed pages any more. I know he hasn’t endorsed a candidate — perhaps angling for some deal with Obama and Clinton — but no word to his former followers on Twitter.

Well, why should he: we are only 4,544 people. He’s probably got more major contributors than that, who he called up and personally thanked them, etc., after giving up the race.

And it’s not that I would believe that a tweet from John Edwards was authentic, really, if ‘he’ sent one. Something like ‘Thanks for your efforts on my behalf. I am going to do XYZ now, and I hope to keep in touch.’ Or something. Or something, ‘John’.

So, I am not really surprised I guess, but I feel used, like having someone wipe their greasy hands on my tablecloth after I invited them to dinner in my house. Or a friend who moves away for a new career in a distant city, and then never, ever calls.

Just bad manners, at the best, and at the worst, a profound callousness and insensitivity to the mores of our teensy weensy web culture, here on the edge of everything.

I will post a link to this on Twitter, addressed to @johnedwards, but I don’t believe he will read it. They’ve moved on, packed up the bumper stickers and pins, the banners and the posters; but we are still here, twinventing something based on true voice, and involvement, and a deepening sense of global commitment. Perhaps the pins and posters and banners are all a barrier, a sideshow, a distraction from something more important, anyway. But even if it was all shadowplay — a closet drama — I wanted a better ending. We deserved a better close to this chapter than that.