Will the Internet Re-Create Politicians?

I spent some time this week at two New York events -- Advertising 2.0 and Internet Week -- where several panels were dedicated to the Internet's influence on the 2008 presidential election here in the U.S. of A.

Kicking off one of the panels, Andrew Rasiej, founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, noted that "voter-generated content is the wild card in this election," as it is changing the way we discuss politics and influence one another.

But maybe the real thing to note is that VGC isn't only changing us; it is changing the candidates -- or will going forward.

YouTube has made it virtually impossible to sidestep a previously buried slip of the tongue or career-ending moment in the political campaign -- thus rendering several uncomfortable politico goofs as set in stone. Our ability to capture and spew every moment of candidate bloopers to an audience of billions will have to force the candidates and their constituents to think twice before saying -- or singing -- something stupid. This fundamental change in behavior, while critical now, is perhaps something that won't kick in until the 2012 candidates look back at what went wrong in 2008.

"If you ever heard someone say the Internet never elected anybody, you should talk to George Allen, because the Internet un-elected him," said Rasiej, referring to the caught-on-vid moment where Allen referred to a young volunteer of Indian descent as "macaca." Rasiej explained these career-slaughtering videos will only multiply in numbers, because most people are what he calls "viderate."

"Our entire population around the world is half viderate," Rasiej said of those who know how to create and use video (we all just love a new buzzword, don't we?). "The entire generation coming onto mobile platforms is versed in creating messages... There's an entirely new skillset appearing on the landscape that is going to upend politics and communications of all kinds."

That said, if they aren't careful, candidates will have to spend more time in 2008 recovering from the candid camera shots that creep up on the Internet as early grim reapers. "My guess is they'll spend a lot of time responding to the 'gotcha' videos and defending themselves to see if they can make some noise to combat the noise that's already online," said Sarah Bernard, president of 236.com.

In addition to sidestepping the gotcha moments, or trying their damndest to avoid them, presidential candidates will find that the Internet and its folly aren't just awkward bystanders in the race anymore -- and ignoring the tech-savvy and viderati, or what have you, can only hurt when ballot season rolls around.

Thus, the Mitt Romneys of the world, for example, will no longer be able to reject things like YouTube debates on account of being too good to be spoken to by a snowman.

"The YouTube debate is about connecting with real people," said Steve Grove, head of news and politics at YouTube Inc. "At the end of the day, that's something the campaign can't really ignore in an Internet age."

Nor can We the People ignore such classics as this: