I don’t agree with the issue Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) is advocating in this campaign web video (he’s pushing his consistent pro-life position in contrast to Mitt Romney’s ‘light on the road to the White House’ conversion to the cause). But this strikes me as one of the better, maybe the best use of distributed or viral video by a campaign yet.
The backstory here is that at the Sunday Republican debate Sam Brownback got asked about robocalls his campaign has been using in Iowa against Romney. The calls attacked Romney as a Johnny-come-lately to the pro-life cause. Romney said the accusations were false. But when debate moderator George Stephanopoulos pressed Romney on just what was false, it became pretty clear that the charges must all be true since Romney just blathered on without specifically challenging any of the claims. Nor should this be surprising since Romney was pro-choice right up until the point where he was pretty sure he wanted to run for president in 2008 and then he became pro-life.
In any case, here’s Brownback following up.
One thing I like about this video is that it’s one of candidates continuing the dialog outside of the often distorting and constraining time limitations of a debate. It also comes across as pretty genuine and unscripted (a subjective appraisal, but take a look). He speaks right to the camera. And it’s a case where a candidate has what I think is demonstratively truth on his side, and he’s using the technology to make his point and point viewers to third party analyses.
There’s always a temptation to imagine that new technologies transform the terms of communication more profoundly than they do. But this is a case where Brownback is doing something that wouldn’t be possible unless the candidate controlled the medium of distribution.
Brownback’s chances of winning the nomination are next to nil I think. Maybe (nil+2) or (nil+3). But if one of the top-tier candidates, on either side, could do this I think it could be a very powerful force for their campaign.
Of course, in most cases, to appear genuine and unscripted requires in some degree actually being genuine and unscripted. And that may greatly reduce the number of candidates for whom this is an option.
