I Would Never Have Predicted This

All Hail The New Era Of Social Media!
(or, the more gadgets there are recording you, all the time, the worse it is when you f*** up)

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39410.html

The year of 'no comment'

Nevada Republican Sharron Angle was in no mood for conversation last month as she darted to her car at the end of a campaign event. When a Las Vegas reporter tried to ask the Senate candidate a question anyway, an Angle supporter called him an “idiot.”

In Illinois, another Senate candidate, GOP Rep. Mark Kirk, also has been getting aerobic workouts by trying to stay a step ahead of the press. He virtually sprinted out the back of a Chicago hotel last month to avoid reporters who wanted to ask him about exaggerated resume claims.

And in Kentucky, Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul told local reporters who approached him after an event that they ought to submit their questions in writing.

These are snapshots of scenes playing out among skittish politicians across the land this election cycle: 2010 has become the year of “no comment.”

It’s a surprising twist in the revolution in media.

Not long ago, optimists thought the convergence of YouTube, blogs and all manner of other democratizing social-media technologies would lead to a renaissance of authenticity in politics. Liberated from the filter of mainstream news reporters, armed with new tools to reach voters, candidates could shed artifice and bring back spontaneity to the campaign trail.

The actual result, however, is something like the opposite: A proliferation of cameras and microphones — and the knowledge that an indelible blunder can occur in virtually any setting — has caused politicians in both parties to button up and hunker down.

“The irony is that in an political environment in which voters are demanding authenticity, candidates find themselves in a technological environment that exploits authenticity,” lamented Mark McKinnon, a longtime political strategist and top adviser to George W. Bush and John McCain. “So rather than show more of themselves as voters want, candidates are showing less of themselves for fear of revealing too much.”

In fact, 2010 has yielded some gems when it comes to unscripted politics. But most of them have been moments the politicians dearly wish they could take back.

There was Carly Fiorina’s hot mic incident, in which she was cattily critiquing the media strategy of fellow Republican Meg Whitman and the hair of Sen. Barbara Boxer, the Democrat she is trying to defeat in this year’s race. And there was North Carolina Democratic Rep. Bob Etheridge’s physical clash with young men wielding a flip cam, which also became a YouTube sensation.

And for an unvarnished glimpse at what a politician really thinks, it’s hard to improve on California Democrat Jerry Brown’s famous comparison of his Republican opponent in the governor’s race to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.



Brown made the comment — which dominated the California race for days — when he ran into a reporter after finishing a jog and uttered words he never intended for public circulation.

“I got the message,” Brown, who is relearning the game while seeking a job he first won 36 years ago, recently told a radio interviewer. That message: “I can’t really ever say anything just musing in my mind. But it really does mean that politicians are always very controlled and not very spontaneous in their communications.”

In fact, most politicians are getting the same message in one form or another.

After the Etheridge incident, the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent a memo to GOP Senate campaigns reminding them to be cautious when any camera is on them. Don’t insult or threaten or physically touch a videographer, the memo read, because “your interaction is likely being recorded.”

Experience shows there is good reason to be cautious — the opposition is on the prowl for another "macaca moment."

In an attempt to capture a clip such as the devastating 2006 video of then-Sen. George Allen disparaging an Indian-American Democratic tracker by calling him “macaca,” the DNC has launched a website called the "Accountability Project" to solicit and display embarrassing clips of GOP candidates from anybody who wishes to post.

“Everybody in politics looks at the news media, bloggers and ‘confrontation activists’ as a problem to be handled, and best handled by minimizing contact,” said University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato, who has written for decades about how the media covers politicians. “Nothing is really off-limits anymore, nothing guaranteed off the record in the short or long term. The safest route for a candidate or officeholder is to live in a parallel universe, separated entirely from potential troublemakers.”

Members of Congress are trying to fight technology with technology. Increasingly, town halls — at which angry, trash-talking constituents last summer put lawmakers on the spot and provided ripe fodder for cable TV and YouTube — are out. Instead, many legislators are holding “tele-town halls,” at which they can pick and choose questions from constituents over the phone.

Embattled Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.), for example, explained with a strong dose of candor why he wouldn’t hold any town hall meetings this summer but would instead talk to residents of his district over the phone.

"We're going to do everything we can to get opinons from people, to meet with people, but I'm not going to set myself up for, you know, nuts to hit me with a camera and ask stupid questions," Kanjorski told a local radio station.

Other 2010 hopefuls who previously were regulars on the talk-show circuit have also taken a low profile.



Rep. Roy Blunt, for example, is running for the Senate in Missouri and trying to fend off accusations that he’s a creature of Washington. Doing national television shows, particularly with the image of the Capitol in the background, won’t help his effort.

Even as he keeps his distance from Beltway green rooms, though, Blunt is still experiencing the danger that now looms for pols with the new media.

After he was captured on video attending the opening of Georgetown’s “Social Safeway” last month, the Missouri Democratic Party compiled a YouTube video in which Blunt noted that the store was in his neighborhood.

"The nonchalant behavior at a Washington elite social function serves as yet another reminder of how Congressman Blunt has come a long way from Springfield to become the very worst of Washington during his last 13 years there," blared the state party in a press release.

Jennifer Palmieri, a longtime Democratic communications strategist, said what's new is not politicians being afraid of "gotcha" moments but todays' technology.

"There are so many new ways to capture and disseminate those moments," Palmieri said.

Politicians’ instinct for caution and control extends to the White House. Last July, when President Barack Obama held a news conference intended to promote health care reform, the event got defined by his decision to weigh in on the arrest of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., Obama said police “acted stupidly,” stepping on his own message and setting off a weeklong tempest that only subsided after a “beer summit” at the White House with Gates and the arresting officer.

Obama didn’t hold another full-dress news conference for nearly a year, longer than his two predecessors ever went without a formal question-and-answer session with the White House press corps. He favors one-on-one interviews that can more easily be controlled and which leave less chance for a slip-up that will make headlines.

The most vivid example of how candidates are adjusting to the new media forces can be found in the difference between McCain’s 2000 and 2008 presidential campaigns.

The first time he mounted a White House bid, McCain offered nonstop, on-the-record access to reporters and rewarded them with candid, ironic and at times off-color material on his “Straight Talk Express.”

But eight years, and a technological century, later, McCain put up a literal and symbolic curtain on his plane to keep out a press corps that by then carried camcorders, had blogs to fill and were nearly all writing for sites with a boundless appetite for as-it-happens material.

“We’ve put them back into the bunker,” said Democratic strategist Paul Begala, who said he sympathized with McCain’s plight in 2008. “And then we complain when they hunker down.”