"I ghost-wrote letters to the editor for the McCain campaign"

[EFerrari]

I spent a morning in John McCain's Virginia campaign headquarters ghost-writing letters to the editor for McCain supporters to sign. I even pretended to have a son in Iraq
By Margriet Oostveen

Sept. 24, 2008 | "You can be whoever you want to be," says an inviting Phil Tuchman. "You can be a beggar or a millionaire. A mom or a husband. Whatever. You decide!"

I volunteer in political campaigns now and then. After a series of outings for Obama and a first mission as a phone banker for John McCain, I returned to McCain's headquarters in Arlington, Va. The offer was too alluring to delay -- they wanted to put me into action as a ghostwriter. Next to commercials and phone banking, writing letters to the editor is the most important method of the McCain campaign to attract voters. At least that is what's written in the guidelines that McCain campaign worker Phil Tuchman presents to me.

Today he is training six ghostwriters. What on earth is the appeal of McCain for the former Soviet bloc? Last time I was here, an exuberant Polish guy was phone banking next to me. Today, a Russian in yellow suspenders is shimmering at the same table, looking just like an actor who is famous in the Netherlands for star turns as a genius who suppresses his dark side with painstaking self-control.


http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/09/24/mccain_letters/?source=newsletter

[quiet.american]

1. "Country First," huh, McCain. This guy is slime. nt

[EFerrari]

4. He just didn't say which country. n/t

[zbdent]

2. outsourcing LTTEs to foreign countries would explain a lot of

grammatical and spelling errors of those "McCain supporter" letters ...

Step 1 - begin the letter with "I'm a lifelong Democrat, but ..."

[devilgrrl]

3. How many ghostwrite on DU?

This kind of thing doesn't surprise me at all.