Digital Politics and the 2008 Presidential Election

Looking back at 2006, one cannot help but notice that the most iconic political moments of the year came in the form of grassroots media. Internet hubs like YouTube, Wikipedia, and blogs have turned everyone with a phone line into an investigative reporter, and this has had a significant impact on the way politics is done in America. In a sense, what we are witnessing is the digitalization of politics, and the consequences of this new reality are significant for 2008, 2012, and beyond.

For one thing, political digitalization is changing the way mainstream journalism operates. More and more, major stories are not uncovered in the hustle and bustle of news rooms (as was the case with Watergate and the Washington Post), but are instead creeping out of grassroots mediums, like blogs and internet video. Perhaps the most telling example of this is the infamous George Allen “macaca” video. At a campaign stop in Breaks, Virginia in August 2006, Republican Senator George Allen twice referred to S.R. Sidarth, a video tracker from his opponent Jim Webb’s campaign, as a “macaca.” Sidarth, of Indian descent, caught the incident on tape and the Webb campaign immediately posted the video on the internet. The mainstream media pounced on the Senator's use of the word, which was used as a racial epithet for indigenous Congolese persons by Belgian colonialists. Needless to say, Allen’s campaign suffered a huge PR hit as a result - one from which it never recovered. In November, Webb was elected by a narrow margin, giving the Democrats control of the Senate. In a matter of seconds, literally, Allen had gone from being a frontrunner for the Republican nomination for President in 2008 to a defeated incumbent. And it was all thanks to a video camera and a wired public.

But ending the story there would be missing one of the most intriguing elements of the whole incident. The video, aside from proving that racism is alive and well in America, also demonstrated the impact that grassroots media has on mainstream investigative journalism. In the month following the video’s release, Allen came under heightened scrutiny from the media on issues of race, fueled largely by the “macaca” story. There were reports from Salon.com that the Senator had casually used racial slurs in college, and a Jewish periodical reported that Allen’s mother was Jewish, technically making Senator Allen Jewish as well. Whether the latter story was significant on its own is debatable, but Allen’s cantankerous response to the claim on television, coupled with the subsequent revelation that Allen’s mother was indeed Jewish, was definitely news. Thus, one little video tape set in motion a chain of events that arguably destroyed Allen’s campaign.

There is something immensely powerful about the medium of video. On September 26, 1960, Americans watched a presidential debate on television for the first time ever. Incumbent Richard Nixon, still recovering from a serious knee injury and sporting a “5 o’clock shadow,” appeared sickly and agitated, while upstart Democratic challenger John F. Kennedy seemed charismatic, lean, and youthful. Studies conducted about the debate years later are revealing; those who watched the debate on television overwhelmingly deemed Kennedy the winner, while those who listened to the debate on radio gave Nixon the nod. Incredibly, the medium through which the content was filtered shaped the public’s perceptions of political superiority. Now apply this to the case of Senator George Allen. It is one thing for a politician to allow a borderline racist epithet to pass through his lips, but it is quite another for it to be caught on camera and released to the world. In a sense, the nonchalant way in which Allen delivered the “macaca” line and his accusatory point at Sidarth as he said it were more damaging to Allen's campaign than the fact that he used the word.

So what does this mean for the 2008 presidential election? It would appear as though the candidate who is best able to utilize the internet will significantly improve his/her odds of taking the oath in January 2009. Already, John Edwards has committed to conducting a great deal of his campaigning online; indeed, he pre-announced his presidential ambitions through a YouTube video. And other candidates will certainly follow. Just as Howard Dean revolutionized fundraising through the internet in his 2004 bid for the White House, the election in 2008 will undoubtedly transform the way in which campaigns are run. Not only that, the existence of an army of grassroots journalists, armed with cameras and keyboards, could change the type of candidate that will succeed in elections. No longer will candidates be able to get away with major verbal gaffes on the campaign trail – it will take a cool, composed candidate who is able to dodge political land mines in public appearances who will have the digital edge. So as strange as it seems, it might just be that the candidate with the best online strategy - the best political bandwidth, so to speak - will be the one taking up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue come 2008.