Other Republican campaigns and their supporters are trying to make an issue out of Fred Thompson's innovative use of Web video to communicate his message. See the snark in New Hampshire GOP chairman Fergus Cullen's color commentary:
"Maybe the times have changed, and the Webcast and his celebrity are enough. Maybe he and his tactics are the wave of the future," Cullen said, adding a stinging comparison between Thompson and the failed 1985 launch of a new Coca-Cola formula. "Or maybe he's the New Coke."
My Man Mitt called it the "Max Headroom" campaign back in June:
However, this is one of the critical questions in political campaign history. Will a predominately virtual campaign make the same impact as pressing the flesh?
I remain convinced that it will not and cannot.
And even John McCain got in a subtle dig at Thompson's supposedly absent, "virtual" campaign in the last debate:
SEN. MCCAIN: Well, I think that’s a decision that Fred should make. Maybe we’re up past his bedtime, but the point is -- (interrupted by laughter). You know, one thing I know about New Hampshire and I know well is that the people of New Hampshire expect to see you. They expect to see you a lot, and they expect to see you at townhall meetings and at places all over this great state of New Hampshire. And they expect to see you before they make up their mind.
Now, maybe this has more to do with the privileged position of the early states, but it comes across as hostile indifference towards the medium of the kind we saw during the YouTube debate fight. Nobody had a problem when Hillary and Obama announced online, so why is it an issue when a Republican does the same? Regardless of which candidate you support, we should not be creating incentives against running outside-the-box campaigns -- especially with all that we are up against next year.
These critics rely on the straw man argument that Thompson plans to run the majority of his campaign through Web-based contacts, something Fred's folks have labored pretty hard to knock down. Look at Fred's rollout this last week. A 15 minute Web video followed by five days of retail campaigning in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Fifteen minutes versus five days. That's an out-of-touch Web-based campaign?
Presidential candidates need to be on the road constantly. What's wrong with giving them a chance to talk with the rest of us in between stops, or using live video to bring the early state action into February 5th computer rooms? Technology shouldn't necessarily mean the demise of the early primaries, but it does enable the candidates to market themselves in a national primary situation, something they just won't have the money to do on TV.
Fred's critics are scapegoating his use of the Internet, and making the Republican Party look technophobic in the process. As we showed recently, that kind of message is no longer appreciated, and all the incentives are now on the side of an aggressive Internet strategy. I mean, does anyone seriously think someone is going to vote against a guy in 2008 because he makes aggressive use of the Internet?
Hillary Clinton will be able to raise at least $150 million on the Internet to drown us in the General. We should give Fred credit for trying. We're going to need the thousands of new online donors and volunteers he's recruited through this, even if he's not the nominee.
Comments
Fred Will Benefit
From being the anti-Luddite candidate.
Good post
Web 2.0 = Campaigning 3.5
Of course, I entirely disagree that FDT is running a solely online campaign. Nevertheless...
There seems to be this trending towards the idea that campaigns can be won entirely online. Not only is this a dangerous assumption, it is false to the extreme. New media can compliment, it's "sexy", it shows motion without demonstrating progress, but online media will never (and can never) usurp the traditional methods of camapigning.
Some of this has to do with demographics in a short-term version of the argument. Simply put, 18-30 year olds utilize technology and feel more comfortable with the new media. 18-30 year olds also don't vote, and that's a huge problem.
Switch gears to plain ol' psychology. The difference between a guy that floods your mailbox with fifteen letters vs. the guy that knocked on your door and said "hello" to ask for your vote -- which guy wins?
It's Campaigning 101. New media may help facilitate a good ground game, but without a good ground game, your toast.Â
Need examples? Dean '04 keeps coming to mind... but that's an old horse beaten dead.Â
The real trick to online campaigning is attempting to translate online activism into on-the-ground activism. It's a new pool to dip into (think ActBlue chasing small dollar donors vs. traditional large dollar contributions via events and mail) for volunteers and potential activists.Â
One additional problem the new media will have that traditional methods eventually faced is "junk media" -- or the oversaturation of online content and media. Sure twenty presidential campaigns can reach out online, because it's cheaper than traditional methods. But what is the independent to do when digitally assaulted by 20-40 e-mails a day? Tune out, more than likely... in which case we're back to a handshake and a smile.
This certainly isn't an indictment/endorsement of the FDT campaign. In fact, at the moment they seem to have the right mix. I have been tremendously impressed by their tactics so far (unlike others, I think their timing on the announcement is perfect on Labor Day), and I believe the excitement level will peak at just the right moment. Personnel wise, they are top-notch. FDT is no pushover, and his online media strategy gives him one hell of an edge.
But what you are hearing from the established candidates is that they have already reached out wtih the handshake and a smile to the voters in IA, NH, SC, LA, etc. FDT now has to play catchup. Their self-confidence isn't based on false pretenses... they're getting ready to take Web 2.0 to school in a big way.
In short: New media alone will not win campaigns. Don't count on it to win campaigns. New media can compliment a good campaign, but it will not (and I would go so far as to say cannot) replace the traditional methods.Â
2008 will teach us one thing: that Web 2.0 is shorthand for Campaigning 3.5.
That's a straw man argument
"There seems to be this trending towards the idea that campaigns can be won entirely online. Not only is this a dangerous assumption, it is false to the extreme."
I'm not aware of anyone who actually buys that.
None of the serious people in this space argue that you can win entirely, or even primarily, using online techniques. It's all about integration with the traditional campaign, and modernizing your internal operations. What I fight tooth a nail for everyday is to move the needle just a tiny bit -- to move the Web from 2% to 5% of the budget, to get people in campaigns thinking about the Web as strategically as they do about press and field, to move away from tired brochure-ware sites and realizing that the Web can be a platform for getting you the resources you need (money+volunteers) to execute the overall game plan.
Think about the MoveOn kerfuffle yesterday. The first instinct at many of the campaigns was to send a press release. Why not send an email to their list with a petition or letter to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama asking them to denounce the ad? You know how many signatures they would have gotten on something like that? At least 100,000 -- and that's names they could have added to their list.
This isn't pie in the sky online stuff. It's thinking in a strategic and integrated fashion about how you can use every medium to reinforce your message. That's 100,000 potential volunteers, and conservatively speaking, about $600,000 of in-cycle fundraising value. All it requires is the top campaign honchos to start think about how they can actually use the Web to their benefit, rather than as a place to just post stuff.
I don't mean for this to come off as abrasive, because I know you're doing the Lord's work for the RPV. But I think a lot of traditional campaign types have this impression that the online people are trying to take over and somehow say that you shouldn't do TV ads, you shouldn't do in-person campaigning, or you shouldn't do mail. No one serious is saying that. And we need to knock this down, because so long as traditional campaign people assume that's our argument, it becomes easier for them to dismiss the serious arguments we actually are making.
Ask George Allen whether the Internet made a difference in his campaign. Yes, it was a marginal difference and MSM played a big role in spreading the story, but in a 1 or 2 point race, isn't a marginal impact all you need?
Not a straw man... more of a clown... like "IT"....
You and I certainly agree on the proper role of online media in a campaign. Granted, no one serious will make the argument that online methods shouldn't be a potent weapon in the toolbox.
...but.
(1)Â Post 2006, there are a great number of "new media consultants" cropping up that are preying upon the overreaction of candidates to protect themselves from the Democratic blogosphere, or utilize anything tech-oriented to show they "get it" -- whether it's effective or not.
(2) Too many candidates don't understand how online media is used. And lean on those who have zero street credibility for guidance.
(3)Â Too many bloggers don't understand how they are being used and manipulated by candidates, the MSM, and others.
(4) Imitation will not breed success. If I see another "Republican-version-of" post, I'm going to break my keyboard in half.
Perhaps I'm becoming jaded by virtue of my vantage point. But for every one good idea I see come forward, I see twenty ways to waste a campaign's time and effort to produce raw motion rather than progress.Â
Your MoveOn.org example is an excellent case-in-point: that's not even new technology, and we can't get that right!!! Most Republican organizations and candidates haven't even gotten Web 1.0 down, and there's plenty of alchemists trying to turn lead into gold out there... they make their buck, our candidates lose, and we get to navel-gaze again as to what went wrong.
The short end of my argument is that onlne media is no shortcut to success, and emphasizing this at the expense of traditional methods is a short path to a dead end. Hence why "Rudy McRomney" (tip o' the hat to Jim Gilmore) can smile broadly while watching FDT play catch-up. They can afford to be Luddites. On the backend, holding one or two anamolies/successes up as examples w/o re-inforcing the "old school" could really do the conservative movement a great deal of harm, IMHO. If we're communicating examples of "how to", the FDT campaign isn't the ideal (due to circumstances and timing beyond their control alone -- and no other factor).
That's a long way of going about saying "what you said", but at some point we have to innoculate ourselves against the if-you-build-it-they-will-come, motion-is-progress laziness that is so easy to buy... and sell...
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