Posted by Jed Lewison on Mon Jun 9, 2008 at 7:17 AM Pacific

We're electing a president, not a website

Ben Smith gets it exactly right:

The raised level of press and public sophistication on this is striking: I think at this point, most people are willing to accept that both candidates can't control everything that happens on their sites, a source of major confusion in 2004, when MoveOn was accused of using Nazi comparisons because a user of the site did.

This is the key point: inevitably, on both McCain's and Obama's web sites, a minute amount of offensive material will fall through the cracks. That's the price of having an open, accessible online presence, and it's clearly a tradeoff worth making.

There is nothing -- not a single thing -- to suggest that either McCain or Obama themselves embrace any elements of the scurrilous materials that are found on their sites from time to time. And that's really the important thing -- we're not electing a damn website, we're electing a president.

We're electing a president, not a website

Ben Smith gets it exactly right:

The raised level of press and public sophistication on this is striking: I think at this point, most people are willing to accept that both candidates can't control everything that happens on their sites, a source of major confusion in 2004, when MoveOn was accused of using Nazi comparisons because a user of the site did.

This is the key point: inevitably, on both McCain's and Obama's web sites, a minute amount of offensive material will fall through the cracks. That's the price of having an open, accessible online presence, and it's clearly a tradeoff worth making.

There is nothing -- not a single thing -- to suggest that either McCain or Obama themselves embrace any elements of the scurrilous materials that are found on their sites from time to time. And that's really the important thing -- we're not electing a damn website, we're electing a president.

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