Digital Campaigning Won't Put Obama In The White HouseDigital Campaigning Won't Put Obama In The White House

Barack Obama is active on social networks. He swaps e-mail with a Hollywood starlet. He's planning to announce his VP choice over SMS. But this election isn't going to be decided on the Internet. Old media, especially television, will deliver the messages that win the election.Paul Saffo makes an astonishing prediction on ABCNews.com, in a June article headlined "Obama's 'Cybergenic' Edge":

Obama is certainly aggressive on the Internet, to an extent unprecedented in presidential elections. He's certainly more aggressive than John McCain, who doesn't use a computer -- or even know how. By contrast, Obama has the most popular account on Twitter. He has an account on FriendFeed, a service which aggregates feeds from other social networks. And the FriendFeed account points to RSS feeds from his Web site, his Digg account, his Flickr account, his LinkedIn page, and YouTube channel.

The Internet-friendly Obama has been exchanging e-mails with starlet Scarlett Johansson. A June report makes it look like they're BFFs, swapping tips on alternative energy and hair care. But a more recent interview has Obama keeping his distance, saying that she sent one e-mail to an aide, who forwarded it to Obama, and then the aide returned Obama's reply.

(Warning: The headline on the previous link contains the words "lesbian kiss." Which has nothing to do with Obama, in case you're scratching your head about that.)

Obama this week said that he will announce his VP choice over SMS (and so far, the Obama campaign has, surprisingly, refrained from sending spam to all those numbers it collected, at least so far).

To be fair, the McCain campaign has a Web site and makes aggressive use of e-mail newsletters. But Obama is far more aggressive on the Internet.

Still, it's too soon to say -- as Saffo did -- that the Internet is going to clinch this election.

For one thing, while the Obama campaign is using the Internet aggressively, it's not doing a very good job of it. His Twitter account is just plain dull. The last time he -- or, more likely, some intern toiling in a windowless office -- updated it is three days ago. The most recent nine messages contain links back to his Web site. Other messages include such breathtaking conversational gambits as "Commemorating the Anniv of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Let us recommit ourselves to building a world free of unnecessary barriers." I wouldn't subscribe to that account if the owner wasn't a major presidential candidate -- indeed, the account exhibits the behavior of someone who doesn't know how to use Twitter and won't learn.

Obama's Flickr account isn't much better -- page after page of uninteresting photos of unidentified people standing around.

Obama's FriendFeed account is equally lackluster, being an aggregation of his lackluster performance on other social networks.

But, still, the fact that Obama is on these social networks is cool, and it gives the rest of us on those same social networks a warm feeling that he's one of us.

And wouldn't you like to exchange e-mail with Scarlett Johansson?

The Baltimore Sun casts a critical eye on the emerging common wisdom that Obama is the first cybergenic candidate. David Zurawik, writing a column called, appropriately enough, "Critical Eye," says that Obama, should he get elected, might be the last TV president, rather than the first Internet president.

Zurawik takes Saffo and journalists to task for comparing Obama to titanic presidents like Franklin Roosevelt, who embraced radio, and John Kennedy, who embraced television, when those media were new -- even Abraham Lincoln, who made aggressive use of the then-new technology of the telegraph during the Civil War.

In particular, Zurawik takes issue with the common wisdom that the 1960 TV Kennedy vs. Nixon debate clinched that election, because JFK was young and handsome and Nixon -- who was only four years Kennedy's senior -- looked old and haggard. In fact, says Zurawik, that election was extremely tight, and pundits just latched onto TV when looking for an explanation why Kennedy won. It was a seductive theory.

Old media doesn't switch off like a light when the new media emerges. The TV news audience is shrinking, but it still amasses 25 million nightly viewers. Some 60% of Americans get their news primarily from TV, compared with 15% for the Internet, Zurawik writes, adding, "Nothing speaks to the primacy of TV over the Internet this year like the record $5 million and $6 million spent by the Obama and McCain campaigns, respectively, in advertising buys on the Olympics. Follow the money if you want to know what the candidates and their handlers really believe in -- and it's TV, not the Internet, that comes first."

Zurawik doesn't address Saffo's most outrageous claim: That lack of Internet savvy cost Hillary Clinton the election:

The Atlantic Monthly reports that what cost Clinton the election was her own failure to manage her campaign staff, and reluctance to mount a negative campaign against Obama (ironic, considering she cultivated the image of herself as a veteran manager and ruthless fighter). If the Internet played a role, it was one factor among many.

And Howard Dean is a bad example to cite if you're looking for the evidence of the power of Internet campaigning. His campaign shriveled up when subjected to the harsh light of the real-world primary process.

To be sure, the Internet will prove important in this campaign. The social networking crowd is part of Obama's core constituency -- a little more affluent than the average American, a bit younger, a bit more willing to embrace change -- and it's important for a candidate to keep serving the core constituency.

The Internet's importance to fundraising is well-known. Dean pioneered that.

Perhaps most important of all, the Internet is a multiplier for other media. News that breaks on TV, or in newspapers, gets posted to the Internet quickly. You can watch the video on YouTube, or read the article on a newspaper or magazine's Web site. A candidate can use services like Twitter to remind voters to catch important events on TV.

The Internet is important. But it's not going to decide who's president. At least, not this year it won't.