Power Ballots

Photograph by Ben Alsop

Crosby has learned a similar lesson. "It's a bully pulpit, but if you get up and start preaching, the audience will dismiss you," he says. "You can't berate them. You have to be very clever and very positive." In this way, the criticisms coming from the right are perhaps more constructive than they were ever intended to be.

Yet as activists try to hone their approaches for 2008, quantifying their impact remains frustratingly difficult. While political races conveniently produce a winner and a loser, so many factors go into the contests that isolating the utility of a particular event, project, or appearance can be extremely complicated. Air Traffic Control's Potts says part of her job is coming up with ways to calculate the success of artist activism but admits there's no easy answer. "There's no one measurement you can apply to every event," she says. "Attendance may be a core goal, monies raised, press hits. We've tried to develop some metrics around things like tabling -- when bands let organizations set up tables at their concerts. We measure what we call an 'engagement sequence,' where you get someone in the front door, then gauge the drop-off over the next few actions you ask them to do."

Talk of drudgery like "metrics" and "tabling" and "engagement sequences" is a far cry from hanging with Usher, but it's this rigor that keeps artist activism from being more than an exercise in onanism. As MoveOn's Dawn puts it, "We don't want to repeat actions that don't work. No one wants to bang their head against the wall."

One sure signal that artist activism has some positive impact is that Republicans are trying to get in on the act. During the 2007–2008 primary season, country stars Sara Evans, Gretchen Wilson, and John Rich all sang at fundraisers for Fred Thompson; Ricky Skaggs and Collin Raye played events for Mike Huckabee; and Mitt Romney earned approval from Pat Boone and the Osmonds. While this lineup isn't going to drum up much excitement in the blue states, it does display an openness to celebrity activism that's largely at odds with the rhetoric Republicans have been spouting for years. As GOP strategist Wilcox says of his party's relationship with artist activism, "They desperately want it, have no idea how to get it, and in some ways have stopped trying. I think that's terribly unwise. Their image with younger voters has suffered as a consequence."