YouTube Oversaturation Syndrome
Yes, instant video, YouTube, viral e-mailing, UGC (that's user generated content) -- it's all serving to keep presidential candidates on their toes. And everyone remotely familiar with politics today can point to a video that changed a race.
But is there a limit?
We ask because we once again received a video from a McCain booster featuring Mitt Romney's explanation for his abortion conversion. It juxtaposes Romney's now famous 1994 debate against Ted Kennedy with an interview he gave last week to ABC News's Terry Moran.
On the one hand, the more these contrasts are drawn, the more Romney's conversion seems elastic. Video and sound make the transformation all the more remarkable, and, if you're a conservative, potentially disburbing. George Allen could never get rid of Macaca, and Mitt Romney will never shake himself of that 1994 debate footage. (We imagine that YouTubers would have gone ga-ga over Michael Dukakis in a tank or George H.W. Bush on a supermarket checkout line.)
The difference here is that this latest video was not produced by McCain's campaign. Neither, to our knowledge, was the Bay Windows article controversy in December that turned Romney the visionary into Romney the having-to-explain-his-transformation guy.
Just as candidates find it very difficult to control their public image nowadays, campaigns find it very difficult to control the release of opposition research. And they may find it harder to manipulate media to caricature opponents. Imagine the 2004 campaign with endless YouTube videos of President Bush's Iraq war explanations. If Romney survives these next few months and manages to convince conservatives that he's real, what happens in late 2007, when McCain airs an ad with some heretofore undiscovered Romney flip-flop? Will the political world be to YouTubed to death to care? [MARC AMBINDER]
Regarding Mitt Romney and the term "flip-flop," he may have changed his mind about abortion like so many other people (e.g., Ronald Reagan), but a true flip-floper is one who "conviently" goes back again to his previous position (ala Kerry's "I was against the war before I was for it"). I think it takes guts to admit one has been wrong (Mitt's extended family experience is a logical reason why he may have initially sympathized with legal abortions). Converts on a subject usually become very strong in their convictions, so we need not be concerned that Mitt will change his mind again and become a true flip-flopper.