Howard Dean's campaign for president changed the way in which campaigns are run today. With an unlikely collection of highly talented and motivated staffers drawn from a variety of backgrounds, the Dean campaign transformed the way in which money was raised and supporters galvanized by using the Internet. Surprisingly, many of the campaign staff members were neither computer whizzes nor practiced political operatives, even though that is how some of them are identified today. This book allows key individuals in the campaign the chance to tell their stories with an eye to documenting the Internet campaign revolution and providing lessons to future campaigns. Howard Dean's inspirational statement of what it took for his campaign to get as far as it did mousepads, shoe leather, and hope holds great wisdom for anyone campaigning today, especially the 2008 presidential candidates. Includes an interview with Howard Dean and additional contributions by Jerome Armstrong, Larry Biddle, Manuel Castells, Bobby Clark, Zack Exley, Matthew Gross, Aldon Hynes, Joshua Koenig, Nicco Mele, Amanda Michel, Kelly Nuxoll, Pam Paul, Araba Sey, Michael Silberman.
Thomas Streeter (http://www.uvm.edu/~tstreete) teaches at the University of Vermont, and studies media, technology, law, and culture. He studies the soft side of hard issues, that is, the role of cultural beliefs in shaping things like institutions, property, legal regulation, and technology. From radio broadcasting to the internet, the adoption, use, and even the constitution of new technological systems are often influenced, not just by economic and structural factors, but by cultural trends and habits of belief.
His award-winning Selling the Air, a study of the cultural underpinnings of the creation of the US broadcast industry, was published in 1996. He edited, with Zephyr Teachout, a volume about the use of the internet in Howard Dean's run for President, called Mousepads, Shoe Leather, and Hope, published in 2007. The Net Effect: Romanticism, Capitalism, and the Internet, came out in December, 2010.
