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UPDATE from the WSJ below

Ever since Howard Dean mobilized a ton of grassroots support and small-donation money on the internet in 2004, campaigns have been trying to figure out how to leverage emerging online tools to “get out the base” (read: raise a butt-ton of cash and organize canvassers). A lot of it is still strictly top-down (”Hi, I’m running for president, please watch my video and give me money”); some of it is taking the next social networking step and fostering lateral connectivity (”Hi, I’m running for president, and you all can help: create an account on my website, find people near you, hold meetups together, and oh by the way give me some money”).

And then there’s the bottom-up approach: “Hi, I’m running for president, and I really want to hear what you have to say.” There’s not so much of that going on, really, but recent CNN-visiting pundit James Kotecki (kids these days!) has been urging candidates to engage the voters directly (perhaps the v/bloggerati in particular, at least) via online video and the YouTube community. Communications guru Jeff Jarvis kicked it up a notch by creating a tag, prezconference for the interested and web-savvy voters to aggregate their own videos in which they ask direct questions of the candidates — and, theoretically, for the candidates to tag their own videos with when they respond to these questions.

While Kucinich was the first (and only) one to directly respond to Kotecki, basically thanking him for the style pointers and joining in on the pencil-puppet fun, my boy Joe Biden was the first to respond to a prezconference question, and his campaign is looking to crank out a few more in the near future. Such initiative was generally well-received by the vlogosphere, even though I knew James was going to ding him (as did some viewers) for addressing the cameraman (*ahem* hi) and not the camera/YouTube viewer. Hey, baby steps, right? J.D. Lasica’s original question could easily have been answered with re-packaged stock footage, or hell, I could’ve re-enacted Joe Biden’s alternative post-9/11 speech and call for national sacrifice myself after hearing it a few times; but here, the Senator knew he was responding to J.D.’s question specifically for the YouTube prezconference initiative, and it’s a move fully embraced by the candidate and the campaign. I think that counts plenty well.

Yesterday, Jeff Jarvis asked a couple more prezconference question, the first one basically being the question Biden himself says we have to ask all of the pro-redeployment candidates: what next? What do we do about Iraq after we start drawing down? Once again, I knew I could dip into my bag of miniDV tapes (or hell, just gank some footage off YouTube with TubeSock) and stitch up some of Biden’s public remarks about his plan for Iraq, on top of my own creative performance thereof (it was kind of hard for me not to mouth some of the answers along with him in Sumter). But, once again (again), I knew that wouldn’t quite fly with the YouTube audience in terms of “personal engagement.”

This got me thinking: while we might be able to demand that of the candidates in ‘08, with Kucinich scoring a direct hit and Biden snagging a technical, what next? Is Carl Levin going to have to address every Michigander with a webcam to justify keeping his job in 2010? Is the 2012 presidential campaign going to feature more YouTube time than airtime? Well, come to think of it, that would be a great thing, considering the obscene amounts of money required to be considered a “first tier candidate” thanks to media buys. But candidates on the campaign trail rarely have time to stop and eat a decent meal, let alone sit down in front of a webcam and say, “Thanks for your question, Morty, and I’m glad you brought up American Idol….” They are shuttled around by bodymen and advance teams like VP Cheney being whisked away to the bunker on 9/11, with feet dangling a couple inches above the carpet sometimes. In the next few years, user-generated content is going to continue to explode (and God only knows what could happen if the FCC finally quits sanctioning telecommunications buggery and our cellphones actually work like the rest of the world’s…more on that tomorrow). As more and more people are able to, uh, “contribute” to the conversation (even people like this guy, who tells me to “Get a brain stupid!!!” while wearing his sweaty wifebeater and backward ballcap), what is going to act as the filter? And not just for the downright wackjob content, but for simple instances of overlap or questions that have already been asked and/or answered. And will the hoi polloi settle for video “responses” that consist of appropriately edited and re-packaged stock footage compiled by staffers and/or volunteers that do at least thoroughly answer the question, or will they continue to expect the candidates to virtually hop into their living rooms and give them the straight skinny?

Beats me. But I thought it was something worth pondering for the vlogosphere while the blogosphere gets introspectively hyterical about a possible “code of conduct.”

And, WSJ’s Lee Gomes touches on this very point of the demanding online citizenry:

As candidates deal with the Web, they will start to learn that many Web users have an extremely high opinion of themselves and the online lifestyle they are now leading. Last week, Joe Biden responded via a Webcam to a question posed to him via YouTube. The response was called “a milestone in presidential politics” by one blogger, as though it marked the first time a candidate had ever been asked a question by a citizen.

Then again, Sen. Biden’s answer was one minute and 47 seconds long, which is the length of the average long report on a nightly newscast. The question involved the sorts of sacrifices Americans should be called on to make. The answer from the senator mentioned energy conservation and the war in Iraq. Being able to watch a candidate talk about an issue for a whole two minutes unfortunately has been a luxury in the U.S., though the Internet is in the process of changing that.

[Emphasis mine]

Jarvis points out that MSM journalists have a similarly high opinion of themselves, and he’s quite right. I guess the difference is one of number: there are millions upon millions (potentially) of us, we didn’t have to get a job or join a union or guild to get here, and we don’t want to wait to be called on to ask our questions. So where’s the filter going to come from?

And I’m glad Gomes’ second paragraph about the prezconference video concedes to its significance as part of this new movement, but his fundamental assumption about what makes it cool is flawed, at least in this instance. Getting 107 seconds of a direct answer, instead of the 10 second sound bite, from a presidential candidate may be a special thing for most people, but getting 107 seconds out of Joe Biden has never been a challenge. Working the next prezconference video down to under 60 seconds? Now that will be a milestone!