I wrote a pretty complementary post a few weeks back about a conference call the McCain campaign had with conservative bloggers. 

Two weeks later it is clear that the McCain campaign is failing at the most important part of blogger relations: listening.

Mike Turk signed up for an account on McCain's social networking tool, McCainSpace, a while back.  Due to the top-down nature of the campaign's online effort, accounts must be approved by a human administrator before they are made active.  So far no joy for Turk.  He writes:

It has been 14 days since I created my page, and it still has not been approved.  I have received no rejection, no e-mail indicating there is a problem, and no request to change the content.  There is simply stony silence.

Ok, so they are slow or maybe someone missed something.  It happens.  But Turk has written about not getting his account approved not once but twice on his blog.  William Beutler is also waiting.  Silence. 

A sort of small time, political version of Dell Hell.

And mind you these guys aren't just some random bloggers.  Turk ran the Bush-Cheney e-campaign in 2004 and Beutler is a former National Journal reporter.   If you aren't listening to these guys who are you listening to?

Contrast this with the Obama campaigns' response to a site bug pointed out by Michael Arrington of Techcrunch.  The bug was fixed within two hours of posting (although admittedly that bug was a little more explosive than the McCainSpace problems). 

Contrast this with the Edwards' campaign, where Elizabeth Edwards herself is engaging in blog discussions (including one on our blog). 

Contrast this with Microsoft, which helped Gaping Void's Hugh Maclead fix a problem he was having with his tablet PC within a few hours of him posting.

Having conference calls with bloggers is great.  Truly listening to what they are saying is better.

Update: Mike Turk has now written his third blog entry about his troubles.  We'll see if this ever gets resolved.

Update 2: After eighteen days of waiting, Turk's account was finally approved.  He has a full review of the McCainSpace tool up on TechPresident .