NEW YORK — Given all that's at stake in the 2008 presidential race, it's a bit terrifying to realize that by one measure a major role is being played by an aspiring model, actress, fashion designer and former beauty pageant contestant named Amber.
That's Amber Lee Ettinger, a.k.a. Obama Girl, whose racy Web video "I Got a Crush on Obama" has gotten more than 2 million hits in the three weeks it's been online, making it one of the most-watched political videos this season.
Some of us have gotten so used to our daily fix of Web videos it's hard to remember that back in 2004, when President Bush spoke of "the Internets," there \o7was \f7no YouTube.
Three years later, people are calling this the YouTube election -- in which anyone with a minicam or even a mere cellphone can conceivably affect the outcome. "Some of the best, the most innovative stuff is going to come from some voter out there who changes the entire complexion of the race," says Joe Trippi, former campaign manager for Howard Dean in 2004 and now advisor to the John Edwards campaign.
And that's a scary thing for campaigns, which are used to controlling their own message and enforcing it from the top down.
So what's a campaign manager to do? Fight back, with all the technology available: MySpace and Facebook profiles, candidates' own online communities, text-messaging networks. On Sen. Barack Obama's site, you can download ring tones with snippets of his speeches set to a rock or hip-hop motif.
But Web video is the big battlefield. Here's a brief guide to some must-see viewing -- some candidate-approved, and some candidate-definitely-\o7not\f7-approved:
Going high tech: Web video has given one candidate, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a crucial chance to try to warm up her image. "Let's chat," she urged voters when she opened her campaign online. She's made fun of her questionable singing skills, since others were doing so anyway. And in her "Sopranos" spoof, her campaign sought to catch the wave of a pop-culture phenomenon, mimicking that famous diner ending (some would say non-ending) and even scoring a cameo from the character Johnny Sack.
No matter that the video had nothing to do with any issues. Half a million people viewed it on the Clinton site the first day, another half-million the next day, and so many on YouTube and other sites that the campaign estimates several million have now watched it. Not to mention the inevitable spoofs that this spoof has spawned.
