7 YouTube Videos That Changed The 2008 Primaries
By David Cassel
Online video will change elections in 2008 — but how much? Here’s a few examples…
The exploding popularity of online videos are already creating political waves as far away as Croatia. In America the candidate-picking primaries are being rocked by new online attacks — and counter-attacks. “Always assume you’re being recorded,” reads the strategy guide for Republican Senate candidates, “and always record your opponent.” But Democrats are pursuing the same strategy. Last week many Democrats received an email from their National Committee’s research director, stating their party needed “video crews permanently on the ground” and asking for help.
And the race for President has become almost a video election — a war of images and “gotcha” moments fought on the shores of YouTube. There have already been several embarrassing moments caught on film — and giving hints of things to come. If now the cameras are always watching, how will the candidates handle themselves?
The videos below answer this question — and offer a sneak preview of what we can expect over the next 17 months.
1. Bomb, Bomb, Bomb…
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=o-zoPgv_nYg[/youtube]
At a town hall meeting in South Carolina, John McCain sang a song most Americans last heard on Doctor Demento in 1979 — “Bomb bomb, Iran” (to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann.”) To be fair, McCain was addressing a questioner who’d asked “When do we send an air mail message to Tehran?” and McCain then gave a reasonable comment on the foreign policy danger that Iran represented.
But it showed McCain’s instincts could use some fine-tuning, since a joke about bombing Iran wasn’t something the press would overlook. What’s even more interesting is the online maneuvering that followed. An amateur video appeared on YouTube. Then McCain’s supporters descended on the video to “flag” it as inappropriate. And according to C|Net, they succeeded in conning the video service into removing the video altogether.
But only temporarily….
2. By the Dawn’s Early Light
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=bfZ_gXCHaMw[/youtube]
Another popular video captured Hillary Clinton singing the Star-Spangled Banner — badly. This video was edited down to its most embarrassing moments, and soon became one of YouTube’s top three videos for Hillary Clinton — no doubt helped along by votes from YouTube members who hate her.
But in a clever attempt at jujitsu, the Clinton camp released a second authorized video inviting viewers to suggest a campaign song, and ending with Hillary making a promise: not to sing it. It may or may not work, but it was at least an attempt to “reclaim the message,” humanizing their candidate’s image while getting people to talk about her.
Unfortunately, that video hasn’t even cracked the top 50 videos in YouTube’s search results. And it’s trailing far behind video #1, which is…
3. Barack Hates Hillary?
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=6h3G-lMZxjo[/youtube]
If you search YouTube for Hillary Clinton, the #1 video in the results is this slick parody of Apple’s famous “Think Different” ad. (It’s also the #5 video, and the #12 video!) The video ends with a pointer to BarackObama.com, and attracted tons of press — possibly because it validated nascent hopes that online video would play a role in the election.
But in the end, someone else was caught by this video — this time, behind the scenes. Its creator was eventually unmasked as someone with loose ties to the Obama camp, which was a story in itself. The ad seemed to clash with Obama’s promise for a positive campaign, and the video’s creator eventually left his job at a company co-founded by Obama’s New Media director.
Last week the Obama camp attacked Hillary, and was met with the same response — that Obama should honor his pledge to run a positive campaign. But when historians look back on the 2008 elections, they may say this video also foreshadows another development.
Just weeks after it was released, the Obama campaign surprised political watchers by announcing they’d nearly matched Hillary in their quarterly fund-raising.
4. Raise Your Opposable Thumbs
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=t4Cc8t3Zd5E[/youtube]
When Republican candidates gathered at the Ronald Reagan library for their first televised debate, they began jockeying for that crucial bloc of conservative voters. When Chris Matthews asked for a show of hands — who here doesn’t believe in evolution? — he got responses from Senator Brownback, Governor Huckabee, and Representative Tancredo.
Someone identified the significance of the moment, and spliced just those 28 seconds into a stand-alone video clip. Since this represented 30% of the 10 Republican candidates, it prompted discussion on liberal blogs about just how conservative the Republican party had become. But this moment was followed by a forgotten sequel.
When the Democratic candidates debated weeks later, they rebelled when their moderator, Wolf Blitzer, began asking yet-another complicated question in the “raise your hand” question.
5. …or Not.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X3H-otEMuU[/youtube]
“We’re not going to engage in these hypotheticals,” Hillary Clinton shot back. “One of the jobs of a President is being very reasoned in approaching these issues, and I don’t think it’s useful to be talking in these abstract, hypothetical terms.”
One blogger noted that another candidate had an even more succinct answer off camera:
“I don’t want to raise hands anymore.”
6. Gravel Makes a Ripple
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=0rZdAB4V_j8[/youtube]
It’s perhaps the most disturbing campaign commercial ever. Was Mike Gravel trying to encapsulate the emptiness of the modern campaign culture? Or was he just trying to freak us out?
In an eerie campaign ad, he stares silently at the camera — for over a minute. Then he throws a big rock in a lake, and walks away from the camera.
It illustrates an important truth. With well-financed candidates and audiences jaded by past political ads, it’ll take something startlingly different to get people talking. To accomplish this, Gravel himself perpetuated what could become the most embarrassing campaign video of all — or, the most rewarding.
Although Jon Stewart later joked that he’d determined the secret message in Gravel’s surreal message, and that it was the same as the video in The Ring.
“Seven days after you see this video, you’re going to die.”
7. Catching Mitt
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=FxV-QNXoRIc[/youtube]
Losing momentum, John McCain’s team released a video showing Mitt Romney promising he’s “absolutely committed” to maintaining our current (pro-) abortion laws. It notes the speech’s date — May 27, 2005 — was six months after Romney claimed a conversion to the “pro-life” cause.
Romney countered that he was vetoing an expansion of stem cell research in that speech. Friday he also told a group of anti-abortion activists that “it is not time but conviction that unites us,” and re-affirmed his more-recent calls to repeal the legalization of abortion.
But it’s a handy example of how online videos are augmenting the debate about candidates. Summing it nicely, Jon Stewart expressed amazement that Romney was busted so easily. On Thursday’s episode of The Daily Show he asked:
“Don’t they know we’re all recording this stuff?”
Related:
Entry was posted
on Monday, June 18th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
under 
Print This Post
Read more entries by David Cassel.
Stumble It!
June 18th, 2007
I find the Mike Gravel ad refreshing, as does The Washington Post apparently though I think it’s way over the head of most American voters. The Off/beat blog asks: “Still, is it possible that a commercial that says so little might actually speak more loudly than the standard 30 second blab-fest? Survey says: probably not.”