So you want to make a difference, but you don't have a lot of money.
Write a letter to the editor!
But if you're going to write something to a bunch of people you don't know, you can -- and should -- prepare yourself for that unknown audience.
Below, I've listed several steps you can take to make your letter more effective.
The easy stuff:
Do:
- Do read the paper's Op-Ed section or political coverage from the last week or so to see what people are saying, in columns and letters. If some local blowhard is going on about how Obama is a secret Muslim who was born in Indonesia and wants to raise taxes on poor people, consider working in some countering factual information. But don't present it aggressively, calling the reader a moron. Rather, present it as if the Muslim claim is so obviously a smear that to say otherwise is very silly. And see the hard Don't section for more on this.
- Do find out the longest your letter can be. Papers have reasonably strict limits on how long unsolicited stuff can be, ranging from 175 words (which is a cough, semantically, for some of us) to many more, sometimes 350 or more. And if you don't end up using all those words? No sweat. Better to not factually exhaust your reader than to have someone think, "That was really long. I guess it was all there is to say." Err on the side of brevity unless you're so entertaining it hurts.
[update]
And do ask about submission deadlines. Many newspapers will set a submission deadline for election-related letters because the closer to Election Day, the more they get swamped by such letters touting every race from president to local city council/village board, library referendum, or mosquito abatement district. (Thanks to Railfan for the tip.)[/update]
The best letter to the editor I ever read said, paraphrased, "Dear [incumbent official who lost in primary]: Thanks for nothing. Signed, [letter writer]." Short and to the point. The headline we put on it was bigger, space-wise, than the letter itself.
- Do append your name (first, or common, and last) and phone number to your letter, and expect to get called. You'll be called to verify you wrote the letter. This has happened to me every time I have written a letter to the editor. If the folks at the paper can't confirm you wrote the letter, they'll never run it. If they can, they have no reason to exclude it unless they don't feel like it or you've been thoroughly libelous. And your phone number will not be printed. If your name is reasonably uncommon, some determined sort might call you and yell or whatever, but at that point, you're dealing with someone with enough time to look you up and call you. Clearly this person needs a hobby, so suggest a few.
Don't:
- Don't insult anyone. Calling someone a name never convinced them they were wrong. Writing "John McSame" is needless. Be respectful and your arguments will be more readily considered.
- Don't go off on wild tangents. You have a set number of words to work with, and writing at length about the Glass-Steagle Act (which the paper may even have covered in an editorial or column) means you can't write as much about the 9,800 foreclosures we're getting every day.
- Don't write about an issue like gay marriage or abortion. People hold their views on these subjects very close to their hearts and/or brains, and they change their minds on them not because of letters to the editor but life experiences. Plus, this election isn't about gay marriage or abortion.
The regular stuff
Do:
- Do use maybe a few talking points in your letter, following each with an example or an anecdote (if you think this paper's readers will relate to it).
- Do use active voice, and avoid trying to be cute. "When we line up to cast our ballots for president this coming November" does better as "When we vote this November." You've saved eight words you can use elsewhere. (I just used eight for that sentence.)
- Do be specific. Is the economy down? Yes? If so, there must be data backing this up. Bring up things people likely haven't heard about; everyone knows about gas, bread, health care and milk. How about bacon? Eggs? Pain relievers? A meal at a restaurant? Are you worried (specifically) about your or your parents' retirement?
Don't:
- Don't copy talking points from a Web site and eject them verbatim with no original substance. Talking-point letters make for really shitty arguments because (for one) you have a lot of conclusions dressed up as arguments and gaffes dressed up as "This should be important to you." Also, if you're looking to convince an undecided voter, using talking points without backing them up just annoys the voter (and those of us who are decided and are also tired of talking points).
- Don't write monotonously. Vary your sentence length. Do you see this paragraph? Do you see its uniformity? These sentences are equally long. Does this writing energize you? Or does it get tired quickly? Make your letter interesting and people will find themselves reading your letter more than once because it'll have skated by them so quickly. Fun flies by; boring takes for bloody ever. Make your letter interesting and people will re-read it, thus hammering home your carefully detailed points.
- Don't do this:
health care, energy, the environment, the tax code, our public schools, our transportation system, disaster relief, government spending and regulation, diplomacy, the military and intelligence services.... [and] job loss, failing schools, prohibitively expensive health care, pensions at risk, entitlement programs approaching bankruptcy, rising gas and food prices, to name a few.
"Stuff's wack" isn't a solution or an argument. Everyone knows this country has problems, but the trick is how to solve them. If you cannot solve a problem, and everyone worth talking to knows it's a problem, you waste your and your readers' time saying "Stuff's wack." Bringing up a problem? Bring up Obama's solution or explain why the problem isn't one.
The hard stuff
Do:
- Do emphasize why America needs Sen. Barack Obama as its next president. Emphasize not just change but the specifics of the change. Start out by assuming your audience thinks neither candidate is worth a hill of beans. Therefore, your audience is already not going to vote for McCain. Your task is to convince that candidate to vote for someone, not to vote against someone. Voting against someone, after all, is accomplished most cheaply and easily by simply not voting.
- Do edit the ever-loving crap out of your letter. Many of us could write epic letters on why Barack Obama should be president until he feels like quitting and John McCain should never be allowed to hold elected office again. (I've written one here on letters to the editor.) Your task is to distill one or two crucial issues (the economy, health care, alternative energies) into arguments the average person will understand and at least consider. Going after multiple issues means someone who is undecided has to care about a lot more. This requires a lot more commitment mentally — mental inertia, if you will. Unless you're such a clever writer that you can get people sold on Obama from now until at least a few minutes after they vote, stick to the easy stuff.
- Do stick to just one issue, maybe two. To cover it well, you'll need three or four paragraphs, and if you have just 200 words, you'll very quickly run out of room — and you don't want to get cut off just before your grand finale, where your readers see the light.
Don't:
- Don't try to take on the people who are determined to say that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim who doesn't put his right hand on his heart for the Pledge of Allegiance, etc. These people are (mostly) just looking for an obnoxious reason to vote for McCain or not vote for Obama. They're essentially inaccessible via the editorial page. They need real people to sit down and talk to them — people they trust — and talk about the real reason(s) they're opposed to an Obama presidency.
- Don't treat your readers as morons. You have to opt into reading a newspaper, and ultimately, if a person feels like s/he's being talked down to, all the argumentative legitimacy in the world ain't worth a damn. People want to be respected. They want to feel they are being heard and appreciated. They want to have easy-to-reach reasons they've just decided to vote for Obama.
- Don't assume you're so persuasive that the state will go unanimously for Obama. This means no suggesting that people donate, no calling on Floridians to petition their elected officials for whatever, no presumptuous activities. Direct people to the Obama Web site so they can review his policies on [noncontentious topic you wrote about] and his other positions. By all means, do that. You can even work it cleverly into your conclusion:
"Obama's plan for addressing [issue] is more complex than a letter to the editor can detail. For more information on this and other issues facing this nation, visit backobama.com/issues."
Other stuff:
- Don't harp on gaffes. Gaffes are funny and all that, but convincing someone on an issue of substance lasts a lot longer than getting them thinking about McCain's eight houses. That gaffe worked because it underscored a basic ignorance of the economy. Plus, as Obama has said before, the media concentrate on the silly stuff, which means other people must hit issues, not stupid stuff.
- Don't just C&P one letter to six papers. Consider writing two letters and sending one to three papers and one to the other three. Cover more territory, and learn more while you're doing it. You'll also have factual information on quick rejoinder recall for the office moron who just can't get enough of Drudge and WorldNetDaily.
- Don't assume your fingers hit the right keys and only the right keys. Proofread. If you type "rein" for "reign," your error has a damn good shot at being printed. A spellchecker won't catch it, and anyone reading your letter is reading to make sure the paper won't get sued for running your morsels of wisdom. Be so confident in your letter's flawlessness that you'd be willing to have it etched in stone.
- If it's worth putting in a small text space, it's worth putting out there for all to see. Don't use parentheses unless you must. Parentheses tell the reader that something is not important, and in a fixed-space medium like a letter to the editor, you really should not be telling an undecided voter "Go ahead and skip over that Obama fact."