While I suspect this initiative will be as carefully crafted by the respective Presidential campaigns as their TV commercials and speeches, give credit to Google for putting together a cool initiative for users of Google Reader that might bring more users into the fold along the way. The popular RSS reader has just launched “Google Power Readers in Politics,” a collection of Shared Items from the McCain and Obama campaigns, along with those of high powered political journalists like Arianna Huffington and Patrick Ruffini.
On Power Readers in Politics, you can browse what each of the candidates and journalists is sharing, and like any Google Reader shared items feed, subscribe to it via RSS. Each user’s shared items page also includes a list of their favorite sites to read. The homepage is a mashup of the most recently shared content from all of the participants.
So what are the candidates reading? While there is some overlap between the two (ESPN and each candidates hometown sports teams), both reading lists would appear to represent each candidate’s political leanings and public perception. For example, McCain lists Fox News, Navy.mil, and The Weekly Standard on his page, while Obama includes Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, and The Daily Show.