As noted in the Washington Post last week, the presidential campaign of John McCain has rolled out a new program designed to reward supporters for placing the campaign’s official “Talking Points” in the Comments sections of various blogs.

I don’t have a problem with the concept of spurring supporters to be active in the blogosphere.  The more the merrier! 

I don’t have a problem with a campaign pointing subscribers to some of the most influential blogs, either.  That’s just PR 101, and, it’s being done in the open.

I don’t even have a problem with the McCain campaign’s willingness to offer “reward points” for active blog participants.  I think it’s kind of sad and lame, and treads a fine ethical line – but okay, try it.

But I do think that we should all be concerned by a campaign that actively supplies its supporters with official “Talking Points” and cynically disregards any talk of disclosure. 

When you add-up the lack of disclosure + reward points + proactive targeting, it doesn’t take long to wonder where this is headed, and to be troubled by the trends.

Here’s the Wikipedia definition of Astroturfing:

“…Formal public relations campaigns in politics and advertising which seek to create the impression of being spontaneous ‘grassroots’ behavior … The goal of such a campaign is to disguise the efforts of a political or commercial entity as an independent public reaction to some political entity — a politician, political group, product, service or event.  Astroturfers attempt to orchestrate the actions of apparently diverse and geographically distributed individuals, by both overt (‘outreach’, ‘awareness’, etc.) and covert (disinformation) means.”

Imagine the scenario: a McCain supporter reads an independent blog post about the candidates’ plans for the U.S. Economy.  They then zip over to the McCain site to copy & paste the “official talking points” into the independent blog’s Comment section.  But they don’t disclose that they are a McCain supporter (though it’s probably obvious).  They don’t use their real name; they’re using their online “handle,” and for all anyone else knows they’re an active campaign worker. 

Most egregiously, of course, they don’t disclose that their words are direct quotations from the McCain website.  They are parroting the words: they are “disguising the efforts of a political entity as an independent (and ‘apparently diverse and geographically distributed’) public reaction.”

It could get worse.  Imagine further that some sloppy mainstream reporter is on deadline for yet-another of their never-ending articles about the 2008 election.  Harried by their managing editor, they pluck the McCain supporter’s online comments to add color to their article, implying that these are “direct quotes” from blog readers.  Doing the McCain campaign’s rallying job for them. 

Meanwhile, the McCain supporter wins McPoints for their deception.  Yay!  A free bumper sticker!

What fun would it be if the Comments section of the nation’s most popular political blogs merely became dueling versions of each campaign’s official talking points?

Mashable’s Mark Hopkins totally mangled this story when he suggested that the left-wing of the blogosphere would be disingenuous to object to these tactics.  Hopkins believes that the Democrats are upset because “McCain is providing a rewards system for those interested in promoting his message, whereas the Obama campaign tries to (get) folks involved in spreading the message based on idealism … Sure, none of (the Democratic social media) campaigns explicitly incentivized their campaign messages, but they encouraged users to go forth into the blogosphere and spread the word.  What is the McCain campaign really doing here?”

What the McCain campaign is really doing here is asking people to lie.  What they are doing is trying to dupe us.  What they are doing is using innocent pawns to covertly spread their official talking points.

Let the McCainiacs rack-up as many points as they want.  If that’s the motivation that Republican supporters need to get involved, they can have their free schwag.  (After all, Obama’s campaign is not above offering incentives, either: they often reward active supporters with “lunch with the candidate,” etc.)  The issue is the lack of disclosure, plain and simple. 

When a campaign that’s running for the highest elected public office in the U.S.A. says, “Go to these blogs, use these messages, and don’t bother telling anyone where the messages came from,” then we have reason to wonder how these same campaigners will operate once they’re in power.

Update: A Twitter debate with @MelWebster raised this important distinction: Mel noted that when he was a reporter, he and his colleagues saw similar tactics employed in faux Letters to the Editor, i.e., the letters were written by the campaigns for their supporters to sign and mail.  As Mel noted, these tactics were pretty transparent to the experienced reporters (“We would toss them”)… 

And that’s a perfect opportunity to expand my point.  Reporters glean the plot but typical blog readers more often will not: that’s the big lie. The blogs’ readers become victims of the astroturf campaign.  Instead of listening to “Someone like me,” the blog readers are being fooled by someone like them, using someone else’s words.

Disclosure:  I am for Obama in this year’s election.  But if the Obama campaign’s own Social Media efforts devolve into astroturfing, I’ll actively denounce it here.  (Also, on most days I “heart” Mashable.)

UPDATE 2:  All’s fair I guess?

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