Mitt Romney has the dubious honor of giving us the first presidential commercial of the ’08 campaign [via HuffingtonPost Eat the Press] [crossposted at PrezVid]:
He says it’s the time for no more “dithering” in Washington. Dithering. Nice verb. We’re all against dithering. The nice thing about having the first ad is that you have no attacks to respond to yet. Just wait.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s blog — note how that rolls off the keyboard — has been putting up video of representatives floor speeches against the war. That’s fascinating enough but get how they are posting the video: via YouTube. Here is Pelosi’s own YouTube user page.
C-SPAN has been the place to get source information on video: watch and judge for yourself. Now YouTube can take over that role and not just for limited official events but for source video anywhere. [crossposted at PrezVid]
Here’s a video I just put up on PrezVid, a new show and blog covering the presidential election through the eyes of YouTube (more on that later):
The latest PrezVid show offers advice for John McCain, who unveiled his new web site this weekend with new videos.
McCain’s videos may be ready for prime time, but not for YouTube. He doesn’t speak directly to those of us who are clicking; he speaks off-camera, as if this were an interview, or he speaks through music and polished production, as if this the video were intended for the giant screens at a nominating convention. He doesn’t yet understand that this is a conversation, one-on-one. He appears on an antiseptic, white background, nothing like the homey atmospherics of other candidates’ videos; it’s as if he’s trying out for Star Wars, not the White House.
But McCain has one good idea: He solicits questions for his virtual town hall via YouTube. This means that — unlike in Hillary Clinton’s tete-a-tetes — we will get to see which questions he has the guts to answer and which not. I wonder whether they realized that.
: Since one of you asked in the comments, the embed code for the video is here (under “share”).
And, damn, I wish I’d thought of Tim Shey’s line from the comments:
At one point, it looked like he was about to say, “and I’m a PC.”
: LATER: * To embed this video on your blog (please) cut-and-paste this code:
The resignations of the lightning-rod bloggers hired by Edwards’ campaign is not a good sign for bloggers or for conversation. Now every blogger hired by every campaign — in any position — will have their writing scanned for anything that could offend anyone. Tapioca time.
Presidential candidates should take a lesson from Al Franken and his YouTube video announcing his run for the Senate. (Well, that radio thing didn’t work out so well so it’s time to get a job.) The video is a bit long but it has the right tone as Franken talks about his and his wife’s poor families and how the government helped them get their starts in life; it is a fine illustration of his liberal progressive outlook. Franken is not cracking jokes; he’s not talking to a big audience on a big camera; he’s talking to one person: whoever clicks below.
