September 28th, 2007 Eric Green
The major candidates for president of the United States have become regular guests on the country’s political talk shows, but how much those television appearances will influence the American electorate remains open to debate. New York Times syndicated columnist David Brooks says the Sunday talk shows influence America's "professional class" -- journalists, financial donors to the candidates and political activists. USINFO examines the views of several commentators on how these shows might affect the 2008 presidential race.
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September 26th, 2007 iipcms
Ron Paul supporter Avery Knapp stands next to a sign that reads, "Google Ron Paul." (© AP ImageS)
By Mercedes Suarez
USINFO Special Correspondent
Washington -- Previously, the best way for the average American citizen to get involved in a presidential campaign was volunteering to distribute flyers or to organize local campaign events. But today, thousands of Americans are getting involved in the 2008 campaign by logging onto the Internet and writing blogs.
Web logs, commonly called blogs, are Web sites written by individuals (bloggers) to express their opinions or thoughts much like an online diary. Individual bloggers write commentaries in support of their favorite candidates and debate the virtues of other candidates with other bloggers.
“What appeals to me about most blogs is … that they are written by people who are not controlled in any way, shape or form,” blogger Jeff Commaroto told USINFO September 7. “I like the idea that if they support a candidate or position, they tell me so. Not because they are employed by a campaign but because it’s the way they feel.”
Randy Calypso has been writing a blog supporting Hillary Clinton for president since May 2005, two years before she officially declared her candidacy. “I’m really excited about [this blog] and I’m really excited about the possibility of Hillary for America,” he told USINFO September 24.
Of course, campaigns also have been quick to adopt this new medium. All the presidential campaigns now maintain their own blogs, which detail the daily activities on the campaign trail. The bloggers on these sites are campaign staffers paid to write in support of a particular candidate.
The difference between professional campaign blogs and blogs written by amateur enthusiasts is important. Blogger Ethan Demme, who maintains a site supporting Senator John McCain, points out that while official campaign bloggers must deliver a specific message, independent bloggers can offer “constructive criticism” and suggestions for candidates they support.
Demme wrote an open letter to McCain urging him to “write some short blogs that don’t look like press releases” and to use the video Web site YouTube more often. Demme also noted that these sites are free; McCain’s campaign has struggled to compete with other candidates in attracting financing.
The low cost of new media outlets like blogs and the instant access they provide to voters are two of the main reasons presidential campaigns have been keen to capitalize on them. Campaigns are looking to facilitate involvement for their supporters at every level through a variety of Internet tools. Supporters can connect through online forums, find local events and donate money with a few clicks of the computer mouse.
Every campaign has an automated letter that supporters can e-mail to their friends. These e-cards can be personalized depending on the issue in which the individual has the most interest: send a letter about Hillary Clinton’s troop withdrawal plan; invite your friends to check out Rudy Giuliani’s Web site; or express your support for John McCain.
Some campaigns even offer tutorials on how to start a blog, teaching individuals how to generate a Web site in support of their candidate.
Senator Barack Obama has been in the forefront of using new media tools that are popular among many of his young supporters. Obama’s Senate Web site has podcasts (digital audio files) of his speeches in the Senate explaining his support for bills like new ethics legislation. Obama’s official campaign blog also has sought dialogue with other bloggers.
On Facebook, a social networking site popular with college students, approximately 330,000 people have joined the “Obama 2008” feature. Of those supporters, nearly 330 people are daily contributors to the Obama section of Facebook, adding pictures and quotes and participating in online discussions. The group, started by Farouk Aregbe in February, grows daily; new member Michael Rubenstein wrote: “Great use of Facebook. I hope more campaigns do something like this.”
Rubenstein’s wish came true, and now most campaigns maintain a presence on the Facebook site and other networking sites like Myspace, YouTube, and Flickr. Small icons at the bottom of each campaign Web site allow viewers to register themselves, for instance, as Hillary Clinton supporters on Facebook, or Giuliani supporters on Flickr.
Not all blogging is positive, and many campaigns already have experienced how a statement by a campaign staffer on a Web forum or a video of a candidate posted on YouTube can blow up into a scandal. Many professional journalists resent the influence bloggers can have on the media, and they object to the fact that some influential bloggers have been given press credentials usually reserved for professional journalists. Nevertheless, new media tools like blogging are highly influential and likely will play a major role as the 2008 race continues.
For more stories about the campaigns and candidates for the 2008 U.S. presidential election, see U.S. Elections.
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September 10th, 2007 iipcms
Candidate Robert Kennedy noted the beginning of the sound bite era during the presidential campaign in 1968. (© AP Images)
By Steve Holgate
USINFO Special Correspondent
Portland, Oregon – In 1968, candidate Robert Kennedy, in the midst of a presidential campaign, startled his staff by saying he would rather have 30 seconds on the national evening news than a full page ad in the New York Times. The era of the sound bite did not begin that year, but Kennedy clearly grasped the changes under way.
It is undeniable that a skilled politician can grab the nation’s imagination with a short phrase. Examples abound: Franklin Roosevelt telling the nation, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”; John Kennedy saying Americans should “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”; or Ronald Reagan demanding, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall.”
Politicians have peppered their speeches with applause-lines since Pericles, but the term “sound bite” first was coined almost 30 years ago to describe a television clip of a few seconds that included a memorable quote. The term never was intended as a compliment.
Definitions of the term cover a broad spectrum. Sound bites can be the seconds-long excepts that television news uses to reduce complex speeches or policies into an easily grasped concept. (Robert Kennedy’s wish for an unbroken 30 seconds of network news seems quaintly optimistic now.) Or they are the snippets that media-savvy political campaigns, catering to television practices, insert into speeches. They also can be brief zingers that one candidate aims at another in a televised debate. There is a definition for every dislike.
Perhaps “dislike” is the key word here. The difference between a sound bite and a stirring quotation is largely subjective, based on whether a phrase is viewed as deceptive and manipulative or inspiring and wise.
Disdain for the sound bite arises from its tendency to reduce complex issues to a few deceptively simple words. Journalists and politicians accuse each other of using sound bites to blur and oversimplify. The public claims it is being manipulated. Academics cite the sound bite as the cause and result of the public’s ever-shorter attention span, the television networks’ desire to influence perceptions of a candidate, or the need to fit more advertising into news programs.
If no one claims to like sound bites, why do politicians continue to write them and journalists to report them? Because they are successful, sometimes wildly so.
During the 1980 presidential debates, candidate Ronald Reagan, in response to a perceived misstatement by President Jimmy Carter, shook his head and dismissively said, “There you go again.” The pithy statement, when played repeatedly on the nightly news, cemented Reagan’s image as a common-sense straight talker, in contrast to Carter’s fact-laden cerebral approach. Few can remember the context of the phrase or whether it was even justified. But in that moment, many voters felt that Reagan was a man who understood and spoke for them.
Likewise, millions of Americans recall that when Senator Dan Quayle compared himself to former President John Kennedy during the 1988 vice-presidential debate, his opponent, Senator Lloyd Bentsen, retorted coolly, “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” Although Quayle became vice-president when George H. Bush, was elected president, Quayle’s own political career never recovered from the verbal slap.
In that same election, Bush won in part because of his sound-bitable pledge, “Read my lips: no new taxes!”
Political pollster Tim Hibbits says that in making a sound bite “the emphasis is on ‘bite.’ It should be short, punchy and to the point.”
Political consulting firms across the country offer workshops on how to phrase them, and campaign staffers work hard to coin them. Hibbits says, “Any politician … who says he wouldn’t like to come up with a quick phrase that [diminishes] his opponent isn’t telling the truth.”
Occasionally, the sound bite can come back to bite its author. President George H. Bush’s memorable pledge against tax increases -- the “read my lips” line -- proved so memorable that when, in the midst of soaring federal deficits, he felt it necessary to raise taxes, a substantial number of Americans never forgave him, contributing to his defeat in 1992.
The advent of Internet sites such as YouTube has made the sound bite as much an enemy as a friend to candidates. In 2006, Senator George Allen of Virginia used what was perceived as a racially insensitive term to refer to a young man videotaping one of his campaign speeches. After this ready-made sound bite raced around the Internet, not only had Allen’s hopes for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination been dashed, but he was well on his way to losing his Senate seat.
Some observers say that this new world of unceasing video observation only will increase the importance of the sound bite even as politicians risk losing control of it. These new facts of political life will make them increasingly cautious in public settings, encouraging them to rely on proven applause lines.
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September 5th, 2007 iipcms
Presidential third party candidate Ralph Nader, seen here in 2004, has run for that office several times. (© AP Images)
By Eric Green
Staff Writer
Washington -- Could an independent candidate not affiliated with a major American political party make history and win the 2008 election for president of the United States?
Two noted political operatives unaffiliated with any candidate in the 2008 race offered USINFO varying opinions on what to expect in the next presidential election.
Dan Gerstein, a strategist for Democratic Party candidates, gave a qualified “yes” when asked if an independent could win the White House, while Mike Murphy, a strategist for Republicans, saw no chance for such a scenario in 2008. But Murphy did not rule out an independent winning a future presidential race.
Gerstein said a “ripe opportunity” exists for an independent like New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg because neither major U.S. political party is “offering any kind of solutions to the big challenges” the country currently faces.
Bloomberg recently left the Republican Party to become an independent, a step that stoked persistent rumors he seriously is considering mounting a presidential campaign. Bloomberg denies any plans to run. Republican Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel also is mentioned frequently as a possible independent candidate.
Gerstein, who heads his own New York consulting firm, was highly critical of the Bush administration’s policies. He said the Republican candidates offer a “tired agenda” that is “hopelessly out of touch with the America of 2007,” regarding globalization, the “new contours” of the U.S. economy and the effect of technology on society.
The “overwhelming” demand in the Democratic Party, he said, is “for a repudiation of the Bush presidency.”
But that direction, Gerstein said, will not “galvanize” the overall American electorate.
Gerstein said he sees an opening for a Bloomberg-type candidate because of Senator Barack Obama’s performance. Obama, a Democrat from Illinois, is running a “reformist, anti-Washington, anti-establishment campaign” whose central premise is that U.S. politics is “broken” and incapable of solving pressing problems.
Obama’s extensive use of the Internet is helping him shatter records for fundraising, said Gerstein, adding that the Internet is the “great equalizer in American politics right now.” The Internet is allowing Obama to make a credible run for the presidency, said Gerstein. An Obama nomination by the Democrats would “largely preclude” an independent candidate “from getting much traction,” according to Gerstein.
Alternatively, Gerstein said, a Democratic nomination of Hillary Clinton would give a Bloomberg candidacy more rationale. Although Gerstein expressed great admiration for Clinton, he said the New York senator and former first lady “represents to many people the past” and “would be a real hard sell as an agent for change” because for almost 20 years the U.S. commander in chief has been either a Bush or Clinton.
Gerstein said a Clinton nomination would give a Bloomberg-like figure the “perfect opening” to mount a “solutions-oriented” campaign against politics as usual that “could both inspire and unify the country.”
A REPUBLICAN VIEW
Mike Murphy, the Republican strategist, said that even though the billionaire Bloomberg would make an unusually strong independent presidential candidate because of the New Yorker’s great wealth, his chances of being elected remain “very slim.”
“It’s very hard for an independent candidate to win” under the U.S. political system, which favors the two major political parties, said Murphy, a consultant for the DC Navigators management firm in Washington who is also in the entertainment business as a television and movie writer in Los Angeles.
Murphy, with extensive experience in previous Republican presidential campaigns, said independents are “anti-system candidates” who appeal to a narrow demographic of the American electorate, such as the voters who cast ballots for Ross Perot, a Reform Party candidate in 1992. No independent candidate, he said, is likely to pull more than 20 percent of the total votes cast.
Murphy said a Bloomberg candidacy would hurt the Democrats more than Republicans. The Democrats, he said, would suffer a net loss of about 10 votes for every 100 votes cast. That loss, in a close election, could swing the presidency to the Republicans.
Although Murphy stated he has committed to staying neutral in the Republican race, he rates the Clinton-Obama Democratic contest a very close one.
“I think Obama has a good chance to win,” said Murphy. “He represents change while Hillary is more of the same.”
PREVIOUS INDEPENDENT CANDIDATES
Many independent candidates have mounted presidential runs in the past. The most notable independents, perhaps, include Theodore Roosevelt, a former U.S. president as a Republican from 1901-1909, who ran representing the “Bull Moose” Party in 1912.
Ralph Nader, representing the Green Party, is said to have garnered enough Democratic votes to cost that party’s Al Gore the 2000 presidential election.
Less seriously, Gracie Allen, part of the famous husband-and-wife Burns and Allen comedy team, ran in 1940 on the Surprise Party ticket. To jokingly demonstrate to voters her confidence in being elected, she used as her campaign slogan the American idiom, “It’s in the bag.”
For more information, see U.S. Elections.
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