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My friend and list guru Bob Dunhill sent me a fundraising mailing, to which he appended the statement Abraham Lincoln made when asked how long his legs were.

His answer: “Long enough to reach the ground.”

The mailing, signed by a well-known former federal official and addressed to “Dear Fellow American,” was an appeal for the “Libby Legal Defense Trust.” The core of the request is an eight-page letter, strange because the page size was 5-½ inches by 8-½ inches, just half the size of a typical sheet. So the content obviously was equivalent to a conventional four-page letter. Accompanying the letter was an exceedingly politicized testimonial sheet, a response device and a reply envelope.

Bob Dunhill's comment about the mailing: “Here's an eight-pager which requires patience and shouldn't be read by a Type A personality.”

In a heated political climate — and as we approach an unusual election year, battle lines both within each of the two major parties and certainly between the parties already have exploded well beyond the norm — those who organize snail-mail or e-mail campaigns should be aware of the dichotomy separating the unconvinced from the convinced.

The assumption that anyone and everyone is a co-religionist is an expensive assumption. That in itself isn't a major factor in an era in which a couple of million dollars seems to be Monopoly money. What can become a major factor is replacing conjecture with assumed fact — that anyone and everyone shares a point of view.

These aren't 501(c)(3) appeals basing their pitch on compassion or sympathy or natural tragedy. (A “presorted standard mail” stamp makes it clear that the Libby Legal Defense Trust isn't a recognized not-for-profit organization.)

That level of fundraising depends on a prefabricated opinion, and therein lies both the power and the danger. For co-religionists, oversell is unnecessary; for the opponents, the appeal is an infuriating waste; for the uncommitted, the mailing is poor list selection.

So whether the legs of a political mailing are long enough to reach the ground, so short they turn legs into stumps, or so overextended they stick deeply into the mud they create, depends on matching the message to the target. Matching the message to the target is classic direct mail, uncontaminated by personal dogma and crucial when postal rates are strangling us.

E-mail is the most personal of all media…actually, on analysis, even more personal than a soliciting phone call, because it combines the timeliness of a phone call with an apparent concession of control to the message's recipient.

So what? So the assumptive aspect is less obnoxious to an antagonistic or uncommitted target. Deleting is a less dynamic act than tossing a direct mail solicitation into the wastebasket.

Does that mean the e-mail gates to vicious name-calling are swinging wide, as a goad to pry dollars out of a previously indolent or neutral individual? In the year 2007, political fundraising e-mails crawl with phraseology such as “If you are like me, you have struggled with your outrage”…“This country simply cannot afford any more”…“You and I cannot hide serenely inside our shells, immune from the damage this political predator is inflicting on our community”…“Do you want to endanger this country for generations to come? Of course you don't.”

A genuinely funny entry: A highly emotional, highly partisan appeal states that the opposition “has persuaded itself that the American electorate is stupid and easily stampeded, and overreaching appeals to emotional and unjust conclusions cannot be sustained in the new media environment.” Oh, sure they can…every day until the next election and probably well beyond.

Readers of Direct are far less subject to panic and far more subject to cold-blooded analysis when opening mail or e-mail. We enjoy the analytical process. Our hope isn't that one party or another or one candidate or another will triumph; rather, we hope we'll somehow become privy to the results of all this fustian and bombast.

Will the bombardment that already has started break through the clutter or break the argumentative legs before they reach the ground? As that Russian comedian (Yakov Smirnoff, is it?) says, “What a country!”

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HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS (www.herschellgordonlewis.com), principal of Lewis Enterprises in Fort Lauderdale, FL, consults with and writes direct response copy for clients worldwide. Among his 30 books are “Hot Appeals or Burnt Offerings,” the curmudgeonly titled “Asinine Advertising,” and “On the Art of Writing Copy” (third edition).