Some of the nation's most enduring memories of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton -- memories she would happily erase -- were etched on television more than a decade ago: She didn't stay home and bake cookies in her marriage. She wasn't "some little woman, standing by my man, like Tammy Wynette." The headband. The hairstyles.
On Saturday, one week into her presidential campaign, the threat of a new, unflattering image surfaced: MSNBC used a microphone to capture Clinton singing the national anthem in Des Moines, Iowa. Her voice was, shall we say, off key. The recording was quickly downloaded to YouTube, the video-sharing Web site, and the Drudge Report -- no friend of Clinton -- was steering readers to watch it (by Tuesday afternoon, more than 800,000 had).
Clinton advisers found out about the YouTube video within minutes and their campaign war room made a calculated decision: not to respond at all. They did not want to draw news media attention to the video; nor did they want to upstage their preferred news of the day, Clinton's debut in Iowa.
"Senator Clinton's candidacy is not premised on her ability to carry a tune," said Howard Wolfson, a senior adviser and war room manager. "We did not see it as a significant threat."
Twenty-four hours later, no news outlets had made a fuss about the video and the Clinton team privately declared victory.
The video clip may have been trivial, but the brief episode surrounding it illustrated how visual and audio technologies like video streaming have the potential to drive political news in unexpected directions, and how White House candidates are aggressively monitoring and trying to master them.
Ambivalence among candidates about communications technology is nothing new; Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign used the Internet as a fundraising ATM, then stumbled after the widely circulated video of the so-called Dean Scream. But in the 2008 race, the blessings and curses are much closer to the heart of the candidates' strategies and their determination to control how they are presented to voters.
Clinton's campaign, for instance, has already shown that it is determined to use every new media tool to advance her carefully developed image as a centrist, and to re-introduce her to Americans as warmer, more relaxed and confident.
A Republican candidate, former governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, most recently moved to regain control of his image as a social conservative after being confronted with video clips from 1994 that showed him defending abortion rights and gay rights. As that video moved through the YouTube universe, Romney responded quickly, saying he was wrong on some issues in 1994, a statement that was swiftly captured on YouTube as well.
"In previous campaigns you'd think or hope that the threat would just go away, but now it's imperative that you attack back quickly and personally, and with advanced technology," said Kevin Madden, an adviser to Romney.
As with Clinton's failure to carry a tune, though, not everyone sees an invariable need for a quick rejoinder. A potential embarrassment popped up recently for former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina when old video surfaced on YouTube showing him fussing with his hair for two minutes. The clip recalled the Breck Girl sobriquet that the White House applied to him in the last presidential campaign.
"We tossed around some funny ideas to deal with it -- sort of asking, Is this really what matters to the country? -- but we decided it was just not that hot an attack at this point," said Mathew Gross, the Internet strategist for the Edwards campaign. "The question is, How much do campaigns allow themselves to be distracted by this stuff?"
Several candidates began their campaigns this winter with kickoffs geared entirely toward new media. In late December, Edwards appeared from New Orleans in a campaign video from YouTube announcing his presidential candidacy, and also appeared that week on Webcasts from Iowa and New Hampshire. Soon afterward, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and Clinton announced their own bids for the White House in taped video messages on their Web sites.
Obama appeared poised and energetic in his video, choosing an open-collared shirt to convey a youthful spirit (though it was deemed too informal by some political analysts and fashionistas). Clinton's video drew even more attention: She looked and sounded more relaxed than usual as she proposed that she and Americans spend the year having a "chat" about the future of the country.
There are jarring contrasts between the new Clinton video and the old news footage of the headbanded Clinton: Her physical appearance and her tone of voice, now softer, have changed almost entirely. Yet cable news has been recycling the old clips in recent reports about why Americans might view her as unappealing, or even unelectable.
"Probably more than anyone else in the field, Hillary Clinton is burdened with certain assumptions that people are making about her politics and her personality," said Paul Maslin, Dean's pollster in the 2004 campaign. "The upside is that she will have chances to knock down those assumptions and win people over. Part of the challenge is finding the best media formats to do that in."
Clinton's advisers are moving to replace Hillary 1.0 with the newer model. Two nights after she announced her candidacy, she held live "Webchats" on her site, answering questions (which were vetted by her staff) as she sat on a couch and tried to convey a homely touch. Some analysts described the "conversation" as an infomercial and the Republican National Committee dismissed it as "Hillary's screenplay," but her team is promising more.
Edwards allowed bloggers to attend events on his announcement tour and to interview him, and gave them greater behind-the-scenes access than other campaigns have.
"You have to be vigilant about the attacks in the new media, but you also have to be vigilant about the opportunities," said Gross, of the Edwards campaign.
"In 2003 and 2004, every other campaign yielded the online and new media advantages to the Dean campaign. That will not happen now," Gross said.
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