So it was irritating to him to see presidential candidates making poor use of the Web — posting speeches and canned performances rather than more personal communications. They weren't using the medium the way young people use it — talking directly to the camera in a very casual and laid-back way.
James Kotecki critiques online campaign videos with the help of pencil puppets.
So Kotecki, who once worked as a Congressional page, did what any slightly annoyed college student might do: He got online and made some noise.
And he's not the only one.
The 2008 election cycle is already unique for having started earlier than any before it. It also has been remarkable for the outsized effect that individual voices have had, thanks to the Web.
For all the campaign ads that have aired so far, none has made as much noise as a user-created spot posted to YouTube. The "Vote Different" ad — a mashup of Apple's groundbreaking 1984 Super Bowl spot that portrayed Hillary Clinton as cold and dictatorial — got scads of views and plenty of attention from the mainstream media. Then came "Obama Girl" — an MTV-style spot unlike any political ad that came before it. In the clip, "Obama Girl" (actually model Amber Lee Ettinger) gyrates around Manhattan lip-syncing a poppy ode to "B."
Who knew politics could be so hot?
James Kotecki made his own waves with much simpler clips. From his dorm room at Georgetown University in Washington, using nothing more than a Webcam and pencil puppets featuring pictures of the candidates, Kotecki told the politicians what they were doing right and what they were doing wrong.
Amber Lee Ettinger, a.k.a 'Obama Girl'
Some in the YouTube audience were bored. Viewers posted comments like, "yawwnnnnn," and "why do u care loser!!!"
But other people seemed to be paying attention: the candidates themselves.
After Kotecki critiqued Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, telling him to shorten his videos, tighten his camera shot up and try to be more funny, Kucinich posted a clip on YouTube in response.
"Hi James," the candidate said in the video, "it's about midnight and I'm still at work, and I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate hearing from you." Kucinich ended the video by snapping up a pencil puppet of his own — featuring a photograph of Kotecki — dubbing it "my advisor."
Kotecki did a victory dance — on camera, of course — to show how thrilled he was.
"This was the first time, that I knew of, that any candidate was using YouTube at all, to address voters individually," he says, "calling them by name, and responding to what they had uploaded."
It was a fitting way for the unofficial political consultant of the Internet generation to make his official appearance in the 2008 presidential campaign.
But Kotecki's political adventure was only just beginning. Soon he was actually interviewing candidates (most recently, John Edwards).
Two candidates, Mike Gravel and Ron Paul actually appeared in his dorm room. The interviews take place amidst the homely mess of a college kid's belongings, with cereal boxes clearly visible on the shelf in the background.
James Kotecki is a self-described political junkie. Historic presidential campaign posters hang on his wall.
And the media paid attention as well. Kotecki was asked to talk about the power of Internet video in politics. The Economist called him "probably the world's foremost expert on YouTube videos posted by presidential candidates."
Pretty heady stuff for a college student, but Kotecki was not totally satisfied. Getting so much response was "very, very exciting," he says. "But what I'd like to see, and what I've been a little bit disappointed in, is that the conversation, in many cases, hasn't continued."
Is that a realistic expectation in a nation of 300 million people? Why should candidates take the time to even try to appeal to young people, let alone make videos addressing a single individual?
The answer may be in the numbers for the last presidential election in 2004 when the turnout rate for voters under 30 surged by more than four and half million. That's a tiny but potentially critical margin in a tight race.
Now a college graduate, Kotecki still says that the key is authenticity. "What we do need from candidates — because they're not going to be giving us this kind of goofball video all the time — what we usually need from them is for them to be real. For them to be authentic."
But does video sharing in general also have the potential of dumbing down the process by emphasizing the silly, like the red hot Obama Girl — or the mean-spirited, like video showing John Edwards combing his hair to the song, "I feel pretty."
Do these shift coverage away from the important issues and make voters even more cynical?
Kotecki says no. He believes that regular news coverage sometimes dumbs down the process more by reducing candidates responses to 15 second sound bites — while video sharing them actually let's them make a point in a two minute video.
"I think the candidates who can appear most real and who are the same as they are off the TV camera as when they are on The TV camera," says Kotecki, "are the ones who are going to do best in this because now the camera is always on."
As for Amber Lee Ettinger, the model who played "Obama Girl," she says it was all for a laugh. "It's no different from a Saturday Night Live skit."
- See James Kotecki's blog here.
- Obama Girl videos provided by Barely Political.
- Producer: Erin Green
- Editors: Steve Neilson, Didrik Johnck, Jon Brick
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