It’s one thing to try and figure out who’s writing speeches for a campaign or who’s formulating policy papers, because those involve words the candidate will either speak or directly sign his name to. But the newfangled job of Campaign Blogger is, it seems to me, only a recipe for disaster. The Blogger isn’t writing for the candidate, but writing about the candidate and the party and the news as some kind of weird proxy — like a populist version of a person who answers the phone in the press office. And trust me, what you don’t want in a phone answerer at your press office is a loudmouth with a big personality. Such a person will inevitably say the wrong thing to the wrong person and that thing will get in the newspapers and cause only trouble.

The more personality the campaign blog has, the more likely it is not to help the candidate but to get the candidate in trouble. John Edwards’s blogger’s Virgin Mary bashing may be particularly egregious, but if these campaigns aren’t careful, L’Affaire Marcotte will be duplicated to some extent for every candidate. Sometimes you have to play it safe, and this is one of those times.