2008 – The Revolution In Political Information Heats Up

It is just an attempt on my part to illustrate how fast the world is changing, and as the change quickens, how we are reaching what should be a very interesting breaking point in politics and communication.

With every revolution in communication, from the printing press to the telephone, ultimately, it has been about information, the ability to access information and the speed at which someone can access the information.

What we are seeing in politics right now is the conflict that emerges when one group that has had little or no access to information, for our purposes, the base of the Democratic party, activist and interested parties, voters, gains virtually unlimited and instant access to information while the second group, the insiders within the same party, used to controlling that information or, in fact, relying and existing with the knowledge that the voters do not have access to that information has to come to grips with the fact that they do.

Here’s what I mean.

Up until recently, the process of determining which way your representative voted on a bill was a tedious one. Votes were recorded and, eventually, the record of that vote became public in printed material — often long after the impact of the vote or the interest in the vote waned.

The fact that the votes were taking place in Washington, D.C. far way from constituents made politicians even more inclined to take liberties with their base responsibilities to vote.

The politicians only real concern was whether or not the local newspaper reporter that may cover votes would cover a missed vote, or a changed vote, or a vote of ‘present.’ As long as the representative’s Communication Director could cover this one potential risk, the politician was essentially free to do what he or she wanted.

As we all know, this is no longer the case. Votes are accessible instantly now, and there are not just one reporter covering but literally thousands of people watching and willing to write instantly on the vote.

Often, we see online coverage of a vote in real time, analyzing the vote and bringing up either inconsistencies in voting or absences in voting. This has never happened before.

You would think that by now, politicians and D.C. staffers would recognize this and begin to adjust behavior and certainly some have. However, it is fascinating in a car-wreck-during-a-NASCAR-race sort of way to watch as old D.C. hands try to rationalize old behavior to people with this newfound ability to access information.

The one who has struggled the most with this has been Barack Obama who has made a habit of voting ‘present’ or not voting at all on key issues, MoveOn and Iran votes for example.

Of course, this is a considerable liability to Senator Obama who is positioning himself as one who wants to change Washington, D.C., and yet, he adopts potentially the most old-school D.C. means of avoiding having to take a stand.

There is no courage in voting present.

The clash between ‘wanting to change the way DC works” with the tried and true practice of skipping key votes because no one will notice is glaring. From a broader perspective, the whole disappointment with the Democrats and their inability to do anything about Iraq comes from the same phenomena.

Two more glaring recent examples come from the opposite ends of the spectrum, President Bill Clinton and Mitt Romney.

Bill Clinton claimed that he had opposed the Iraq War from the beginning. This is not true. President Clinton is a product of the old days of politics; in fact, in 1992, he won the race for the White House before the Internet, before email, and in fact, before cell phones were in widespread use.

Perhaps I alone find this fascinating in that we look to Clinton and his very capable cadre of senior advisors as ‘best in the business’ and yet they won in a world that no longer exists.

A few years ago, or even 24 months ago, Clinton probably got away with that comment, in fact, the whole concept of triangulation is really based upon the base concept of being able to spin an issue to two groups. All politicians want to have things two ways, but those that espouse the concept of triangulation, they want to have it three ways.

Watch someone like Bill Clinton say he opposed the war, or my favorite example, Dick Cheney telling John Edwards in the VP debate that they had never met before they were on that stage together. It’s not just that the statements are clearly false, it’s that they can with their best game faces on, flat out lie because they know, historically, they will not be called on it.

Mitt Romney saw his father march with Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Oh wait. No he didn’t. Romney didn’t just say this once, he was using it as part of his stump speech, but it wasn’t true.

In fact, Mitt Romney deserves an award this cycle because he seemingly completely ignores that everyone of his positions he is running on can be directly contradicted with video from his time as Governor of Massachusetts.

Another example is the discussion of lobbyists and their money that John Edwards is pushing, hard, in Iowa.

My friend Matt Stoller at OpenLeft has a great post about it here.

In it, he ends the argument very quickly with the following data point — gleaned, again, instantly, from the records of the campaigns:

“Obama and Clinton both get substantial sums from D.C. contributors, with at least two D..C zip codes in the top ten areas from which they derive funding.  D.C. isn’t in Edwards’s top ten zip codes.”

In his post, there are links to actual records. So, boom, the facts are there for all to see.

So where does this leave us moving forward?

I think we will end up, ultimately, with better and more real leaders. The constant access to information, video, and more will leave us with more real leaders and less Romneys. True racists will be weeded out in a series of Maccaca moments while those that make honest mistakes, like John Kerry and his botched joke, will be forgiven, if they understand the world they are now operating in.

John Kerry’s mistake was he and his advisors fired back at the White House claiming a smear and an attack. It wasn’t a smear and an attack because everyone could see John Kerry say the words on YouTube. What it was was a mistake and certainly I know as well as anyone that John Kerry would never, intentionally, say anything harmful or negative about the troops. He made a mistake, if he had instantly said that, the negatives would have faded, virtually instantly.

We also will see a widening and more painfully obvious gap between politicians and their staffs that understand the impact of the access to knowledge and those that don’t. The statement of Communication Directors make you cringe sometimes, and ultimately, you feel sorry for them because they are used to spinning journalists who, frankly, can be spun. Journalism has, sadly, become the art of re-writing the press release from a campaign or a an elected official.

However, the larger world — not worried about access or status — cannot be spun. And journalists will have to get better too if they wish to survive, which they will not in their current form.

They need to adapt as well, they will be forced to comes to grip with the people outside having insight and often better ideas than the people inside.

The market is speaking, clearly, on what it sees as good reporting and who is providing the information that is timely, helpful and interesting. Over the past four years, as a site such as Daily Kos has grown from 3,000 visitors a day to 700,000 visitors, your average newspaper, which might have had 200,000 readers on Election Day 2004 has declined slow and steadily, using national averages, to around 150,000 readers.

Every information revolution has led to major political changes, and this one will be another one, but like history before it, it will be painful and potentially bloody.

Your first chance to see this in action will be Friday. Of the top
three, Obama, Clinton and Edwards, only one will win Iowa and the other two will go, hard, into spin mode and thousands of thousands of people will happily point out what they’re saying Friday against what they were saying for the last 30 days or more.

Onward.