By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
First it was a TV spectacle. Now it's part of the Internet's growing
archive of Embarrassing Political Moments Caught on Tape.
John Kerry's "stuck in Iraq" comment has been YouTubed.
In a scenario that is increasingly familiar this election season,
Kerry's botched jab at President Bush on Monday has become another
viral phenomenon. Even as television reporters have moved on to other
stories, Kerry's remark keeps resonating on video file-sharing sites,
drawing tens of thousands of viewers who missed it on the airwaves.
Although better known as the home of TV-show snippets, music videos
and goofy amateur clips, file-sharing sites such as YouTube and Google
Video have matured this year into powerful tools of political ambush,
enabling almost anyone to post recordings of slips that the mighty
would rather forget. This new twist on the old game of gotcha has
rapidly become known as "YouTube politics."
The trend might have reached its most explosive moment when amateur
video of Sen. George Allen's infamous "macaca" comment was posted in
August. This week, Allen (R-Va.) was a bystander in another piece of
video, in which a heckler is shoved against a plate-glass window by
Allen's supporters after shouting at the senator in a Charlottesville
hotel.
Sens. Conrad Burns, Joe Biden and Joe Lieberman have been recent
Internet video stars, too. Burns (R-Mont.) popped up this summer on
YouTube in a grainy clip from a campaign rally in which he says that
"a nice little Guatemalan man" was painting his house -- implying that
the worker and others he'd hired might be in the country
illegally. The video was shot by a worker for Burns's Senate rival,
Democrat Jon Tester. Burns's campaign, which is pushing for
immigration controls, had to scramble to tamp down the controversy,
denying that the workers were undocumented immigrants.
"YouTube has put every campaign on notice that someone's watching,"
says Scott Reed, a Republican strategist who managed Sen. Robert
Dole's 1996 presidential campaign. "This has been a real wake-up call
to a lot of candidates who shoot from the lip when there isn't a big
TV affiliate standing in the room. ... Now they have to realize that
every day is game day."
Or as Democratic consultant Jim Jordan, a manager of Kerry's
presidential campaign, put it, "It's easy to wander off message after a
long day ... and now it's more dangerous than ever."
Then there's the video of Biden (D-Del.), a potential presidential
candidate in 2008 whose exchange with a supporter at a June event was
caught by C-SPAN. After learning that the young man was Indian American,
Biden lauded his relationship with Delaware's Indian American community,
then said: "You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin Donuts [in Delaware]
unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking." The offhand
comment made its way onto the Internet, forcing Biden to explain and
defend himself.
It's not new for candidates to employ "trackers" to act as a kind of
political paparazzi, in hopes of catching their opponents in something
embarrassingly newsworthy. Until recently, though, a campaign
typically had to rely on middlemen -- often the mainstream media -- to
make the unflattering material public. And when news organizations
chose to report such comments, they usually did so for a limited
period.
File-sharing sites have changed the political-media ecosystem in
fundamental ways. Ordinary users -- not just media and campaign
professionals -- can shoot, edit and upload clips themselves using
cellphones or digital cameras, bypassing traditional media
gatekeepers.
President Bush's spoken gaffes are so numerous that they could fill
their own online library -- from his mangling of the adage "Fool me
once, shame on you" to his hesitancy over what to call the State of
the Union address ("in my State of the -- my State of the Union -- or
State -- my speech to the nation, whatever you want to call
it"). Those clips were from 2002.
Perhaps the most powerful demonstration of online video was supplied
by supporters of Democratic Senate candidate Ned Lamont of
Connecticut. To underscore Lamont's claim that the incumbent Lieberman
was too closely allied with President Bush, his campaign posted a
brief clip of Bush kissing Lieberman before this year's State of the
Union speech. Another clip showed Lieberman jumping up to lead a
standing ovation for the president during the same speech. In all,
dozens of pro-Lamont/anti-Lieberman videos flooded the Internet during
the primary campaign, which Lamont won in an upset in August.
What's changed, too, is the speed with which the public can view this
kind of footage. When Burns commented during his 2000 reelection
campaign that some Montanans were without health care coverage because
they "choose not to be insured," his opponent, Brian Schweitzer, used
the comment in a TV ad that aired three days later. Nowadays, such
video likely would be posted in a few hours.
Unlike a "negative" campaign commercial, online video is typically
cheap to produce and distribute. Video clips also aren't subject to
campaign finance limits or Federal Election Commission disclosure
requirements (the ubiquitous "My name is [blank] and I approve this
message"). Since YouTube allows users to post videos under aliases, it
can be nearly impossible to tell exactly who is disseminating a
particular clip.
Even so, political professionals say online video isn't a substitute
for traditional forms of communication, such as advertising and news
coverage. The difference is sheer numbers: A 30-second TV spot for a
candidate can reach hundreds of thousands of would-be voters at once,
as can a newspaper story or an evening news report.
The Internet, though, has become a part of the media mix. Many
campaigns upload their TV commercials to file-sharing sites.
Footage of Kerry making his "stuck in Iraq" comment was viewed about
35,000 times in the first 24 hours after being posted on YouTube. That
is a modest figure, at least compared with the potential audience that
saw it on news channels.
But until last year, it would have been impossible to see Kerry on
YouTube at all. The company, based in San Mateo, Calif., didn't exist
until February 2005, and didn't have measurable traffic until the
middle of that year. Since then, it has vaulted into the ranks of
Internet superstars. According to the Internet tracking firm comScore
Media Metrix, the site had 16 million unique U.S. visitors in July,
making it one of the Web's 40 most visited sites. Google Inc. agreed
to buy YouTube last month for $1.65 billion.
Video file-sharing "completes the technological infrastructure for
personal video," says Michael Cornfield, an adjunct professor at
George Washington University who studies technology and
politics. "Before, everyone had cellphones and video cameras and
broadband, but no way to share what they shot. YouTube is the keystone
in the bridge."
What this means, he says, is that "every [politician] now has to check
YouTube in addition to monitoring Google and Wikipedia."
Warns Cornfield: "They better be prepared to live with it."
Copyright 2006 Washington Post.
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Paul Farhi (washpost@telecom-digest.org)