 |
|
Senate Majority Leader Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., right, talks with
an aide before he records his weekly podcast Thursday, May 18, 2006,
in Washington. Frist personally responds to questions on his blog weekly
and is among politicians who have taken to recording podcasts – self-made
audio broadcasts that can be downloaded from the Internet to a computer
or portable gadgets. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
|
Look who’s podcasting! No, it’s not your teenager. It’s your senator.
Veteran politicians more familiar with turntables and typewriters are enlisting
twentysomething computer whiz kids to brave the digital world of blogs,
podcasts and the Web in an effort to help them connect directly with voters.
The 2004 presidential campaign ushered in Internet fundraising and the
lightning speed effectiveness of Web logs. The next campaign promises a
significant increase in Web-based activities; politicians are responding
to the reality.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist,
R-Tenn., responds on a weekly basis to questions on his blog. The former
heart surgeon who is considering a 2008 presidential bid said he saw
the power of podcasts when one in which he discussed avian flu
was featured on a conservative blog and downloaded a million times.
Frist, 54, said the technology allows him to "break through the
gaggle of reporters" and "touch people who are sitting in Smyrna,
Tennessee."
According to a survey after the last presidential election,
reliance on the Internet for political news during the 2004 contest grew
sixfold when compared with 1996.
from AP
The only sure bet in the upcoming Presidential election
cycle (don’t kid yourselves, folks, it’s already started) is that the
Internet, in all of its myriad manifestations, is going to once again
take a major step forward in its transformation of American politics.
What form will this election’s quantum leap take? The
massive movement of fundraising online? The mobilization of cadres of
wired volunteers wherever and whenever they can be most advantageously
applied? Sleazy, semi-disguised attack ads disturbing, discovering or
distorting every aspect of the lives of candidates, their families, their
aides, their contributors and their associates? The grass-roots emergence
of an authentically electronic candidacy?
As we enter the chute for what by all accounts will
be a wild and harrowing ride, the big question for the Dowbrigade comes
down to this: Will the effects of the new technology and the human nets
they engender be capitalized on by the existing political power structure
(i.e. Bill Frist and John Kerry) who will hire sycophantic techies and
ersatz innovators to use new tools for old ends, or will the presence
of new blood, new ideas, new channels and new possibilities give rise
to an authentic New Deal for American voters.
What kind of New Deal? Honesty. Accountability. Transparency.
A viable third party candidacy? An ideological split in one of the traditional
parties? A populist national movement of rejection and disgust for business
as usual rising out of the heartland like a wildfire? We can only wait
and see, but something is stirring out there in the vast American forgotten
continent, among the invisible people, and a lot of forward-looking people
in the Nation’s Capitol are checking their 401Ks. memorizing access numbers
for Swiss Bank accounts and making sure their passports are still valid.
We are hopeful that this election, at long last, will
crack open the stranglehold the two bankrupt, corrupt political dinosaurs
have had on our once-proud nation for generations now, and let the clear
light and bracing wind of freedom dissipate the foul odor and air out
the rotten, decaying foundations of our common house.
We have written in the past of the coming of The
One, the first true
new age "politician", who really Gets It, and is capable of awakening
the buried reservoir of good sense, gallantry and greatness which is
our last hope of saving the Great American Experiment that began 240
years
ago by reinventing Democracy for the electronic age.
He, or she, is out there somewhere. Millions of us are
ready to begin the work of rehabilitating our poor mistreated homeland. The players are taking their positions and the
curtain is about to go up on the transformational drama of our generation.
The Dowbrigade plans on taking a front row seat and enjoying the show.
Stay tuned….
|
