Last week was unusually busy, so I spent some time this morning catching up on e-mail and blog posts. One message caught my eye. Alice Marshall, posting to the Global PR Blog Week mailing list, asks, “How would you advise your client in this kind of situation?”

She points to a message posted to The Daily Kos titled “Open Source Research Project: Alan Greenspan.” The rather lengthy post can be summed up in this excerpt: “Bob Brigham suggested that we ‘unleash the blogosphere’ on Greenspan. It’s a brilliant idea—no one is more worthy of having a halo-ectomy than St. Alan - so let’s have at it.”

The author of the post, guest poster “DavidNYC,” sets the agenda:

If you’re interested in joining this research project, here’s my thinking on how it should proceed. (And feel free to chime in with suggestions on the process as well.) We should hunt down anything Greenspan has ever written, said or done that reflects poorly on him. This would include erroneous predictions, older statements which contradict things he’s said recently, and anything that’s just plain wrong, venal or stupid. The only rules are that it has to be true (of course) and sourced (preferably with a link, but if you’re using Lexis, that’s cool too - just tell us where it’s from).

The Daily Kos is an A-list blog, so it’s no surprise than some 232 comments have followed the post. Some of the comments offer up quotes from Greenspan. Most comment on the campaign. But back to Alice’s question: How would you advise a client faced with something like this?

My answer: “Get used to it.”

Is this really different than a journalist digging into a personality? Politicians (or candidates, for that matter) and most other public figures (think Martha Stewart) are already under a microscope with any written or verbal statement ever made becoming fair game for public reporting. The blogosphere simply adds more labor to the effort. I’d advise a client to be candid about any statements he or she may have made so I could plan to address them and decide whether to be proactive rather than wait for a blogger to uncover something unsavory.

But the fact that headhunting has become a popular pastime for politically-focused bloggers doesn’t strike me as anything that requires a different approach. What do you think?