Few can deny that YouTube and online video has forever changed the landscape of television. What remains to be seen is how much broadband video will change the way political campaigns are run. I've been rather frustrated lately that, although images of Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are plastered all over print and television media, it has been amazingly difficult to get access to their actual, uncut words, much less their voting records. Of course, this is nothing new. The mass media has had an almost complete choke hold on streams of quick-access information since day one. If an event didn't happen right in front of you, (and most don't) you were, and still are, reliant on a messenger to relay it to you second hand. As information travels, it gets bent, degraded, sliced and diced, until what starts out as a steak ends up as leftover corned beef hash. I'm not particularly worried about the media being biased. I'm frankly more concerned with it being hyperactive.

But I find it highly unlikely that the big news networks are all going to take a collective dose of Ritalin and allow us a real, in-depth look at the candidates. A busy person supporting a family and paying bills needs some delicate consideration on the part of the media. There's not much time these days to form educated opinions that are critical in steering the future of this country. Why does the media keep force feeding us cheap side shows ? I know a fair amount about the Clinton camp getting into a tiff with David Geffen and how Obama got dragged into it. I don't, however, know much about what Hillary Clinton stands for outside of the usual political platitudes. I do read the New York Times and I'm addicted to online news. But that hasn't told me much about Obama, either, except that his name sounds too much like "Osama" and that, at one point, he went to a Muslim school and smoked marijuana (though not at the same time, unfortunately). These little, carefully released tidbits of information are designed to make people form opinions based on visceral reactions, and not facts.

If someone had asked me about either candidate, all I could tell them was my gut instinct, and even in that regard there wasn't much to go on. I started to feel like an ignorant fourteen year old who still doesn't know where babies come from. So in my quest for substantial quick-access knowledge, I of course turned to Mama Internet. Specifically I wondered whether YouTube could tell me something new and valuable about the candidates. I wanted to hear what they had to say in detail, listen to the tone of their voices, the expressions on their faces, and all with a minimum of interruption.

The results were interesting. The first video of Senator Clinton shows her as "Big Brother," in a mash-up of the famous Apple "1984" commercial directed by Ridley Scott. Hillary Clinton's face is a pale, chilly blue. The footage of her is real, but the context obviously makes her look like a Orwellian dictator as she issues commandments on a big screen to an audience of expressionless drones. Further down the list is another video of her officially declaring her campaign for the Presidency. The latter clip did, in fact, give me a little insight. I thought the 1984 thing was a somewhat amusing form of anti-Clinton propaganda, and it seems as though it's generated quite a stir. The Washington Post published that a loose cannon in the net strategy firm hired by Obama's campaign was responsible for the hard-edged parody. As a result of this ad, they outted him and cut him loose. They did this, you see, because everyone was so up in arms about the extreme nature of the images. What the Post doesn't mention is the exact same video had been made of Obama as well. He's also edited in as Big Brother commanding a hapless audience. But this one was put together rather poorly, leading one to believe it was a rush job, and a response to the original spoof of Clinton. Naturally, neither camp will assume any responsibility. I don't understand what the big deal was. Political cartoons showing extreme caricatures have been around since forever. But put it up on YouTube, and millions of viewers hit the "play" button. Whoa! Controversy is born (and therefore, ad space can be sold). Further down the video list, small news-piece interviews did enable me to form more of an opinion in twenty minutes than I could from TV, and print in several years. The results of a Barack Obama YouTube search give me a little more concrete info than the Clinton search, but I still couldn't avoid the feeling that even on YouTube, the bread and circus propaganda tends to rise to the top, while substance sinks to the bottom. Moreover, it's odd indeed that the dignified likes of Senators Clinton and Obama could possibly share web space with a video of a kid having an accident with a nail gun.

When being intereviewed by Keith Olbermann even Obama himself said that the big issues like health care and Iraq go far beyond the bounds of a sound bite. To YouTube's credit, this video clip was readily viewable on the site. Links to the candidate's respective websites were also found with a little digging. I visited their sites and obviously found much more about the candidate's positions, but in a more prepared, carefully packaged way. Does "carefully packaged" equal "insincere?" If you should judge/evaluate people based on their actions, then a congressman's voting record strikes me as one of the more concrete indicators of who they are. Ironically, verbatim voting information can't be found on Clinton and Obama"s websites any more than it can be found on YouTube. For that, you have to go to www.votesmart.org.

Not that visceral reactions don't play a valid role in judging candidates. The YouTube clip of John Edwards getting primped and groomed for what seems to be an eternity definitely helps you form an impression. Sure, all politicians primp themselves, but seen on camera, there"s no denying that Edward"s pompadour is exceptionally well cared for. There are other far more substantial videos of Edwards posted lower down. But we all know which video gets the vast majority of viewer hits.

It also remains to be seen whether the internet will enable successful campaigns to be waged with less money. But the very idea that "Net Strategist" now exists as an official job position is testimony to the power of the net, and the necessity of allocating resources to shape net-borne opinion. James Kotecki has made a name for himself as being a YouTube campaign analyst. In true internet tradition, it's a title he's assigned for himself and lo and behold, it's come true. He's held in such regard that Kotecki's criticisms of a video made by Representative Dennis Kucinich actually made the Congressman and Presidential candidate revise and re-submit his video more to Kotecki's recommendations. Hey - what do these stuffy adults know about YouTube anyway? And conversely, what do young people know about politics? Allow me to pillage a quote from NPR's Kotecki story:

"Kotecki, 21, says he hopes the success of YouTube will get more people in his age group interested in politics." Kotecki goes on to say:

" 'A lot of people in my generation are very turned off by the glossy campaign ads, sound bites on television news shows, and politicians basically acting like politicians and not like real human beings," he says. "It seems like there's a very big disconnect there. What YouTube potentially can do is bridge that gap.' "

We can only hope. I'm not sure if people act exactly like human beings on YouTube. They often seem encouraged to do the opposite. Though I found the site somewhat useful, I sincerely doubt it will have anywhere near the transforming effect on the campaigns as say, war zone TV cameras had in transforming public opinion about Viet Nam. The real truth is still something you have to work for. However, like any good info - aggregation site, there is useful stuff to be skimmed off the top, and raked off the bottom. And besides, watching that kid have the accident with the nail gun.... that's friggin' awesome.