Digitally Record Everything
By Michael Tate, 04/20/2008 - 9:35pm

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In a previous post, Dan Manatt makes an important point about "Bittergate":

Digital recording devices - video recorders, audio recorders, cell phone recorders -- are everywhere. All the time. They are small, discrete, often invisible – even when they are being used. And video and audio can be sent wirelessly from anywhere to anywhere, anytime – so that a comment made in San Francisco (or rural Virginia) may be instantly shown on national TV.

A campaign must digitally record everything their candidate says in public. This helps in those rare cases when clarification is needed. When I blogged for Congressman Tancredo, I recorded everything. In one situation in Iowa, we were challenged about a comment which Tancredo had never said. I proved it with video evidence.

Also, a candidate's campaign must digitally record everything a rival candidate says in public. Sooner or later an event like "Bittergate" or "Macaca" will happen. The formula: hire an intern, equip them with a digital video recorder, give them a list of an opposing candidate's public events, and let them go at it.

Here's what this looks like. These videos were both taken last summer in Iowa of the Romney and Huckabee campaign by the Tancredo campaign (notice how the girl asking the question is the same in each video):



These videos were created with the theory that the conservative blogs and media would immediately magnify them or that they would come to fruition later (after primary season). Of course, other campaigns should replace the issue of illegal immigration with another important issue or topic.

If each presidential campaign is not doing this, they ought to start now.

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Should I laugh or cry?

The first video has 119 views after being online since July of last year. In contrast, out of about 50 videos in 3 accounts, I only have two that have fewer views, and that's because they're recent and I didn't promote one and barely promoted the other. One of my anti-Huck videos (youtube.com/watch?v=1KxDhesWutc) has over 50,000 views, and that's just a question for him, it doesn't involve one of his appearances. The other video is a little better at almost 7000, but even Mike Gravel has done better than that.

And, the questions were meaningless and simply resulted in their stock speeches. If Tancredo wanted to sink his opponents, he should have sent people to their appearances to point out how they were lying or to ask them "prosecutorial-style" questions pointing out the flaws in their proposals and the like.

See my other videos and the questions at NoMoreBlather.com for how this should have been done.

By LonewackoDotCom at Sun, 04/20/2008 - 10:58pm | login or register to post comments

For every video that makes it, there are hundreds that don't

LonewackoDotCom,

What catches and what doesn't? For every video that causes a "Bittergate" there are probably hundreds that do not catch but could.

By Michael Tate at Sun, 04/20/2008 - 11:11pm | login or register to post comments

old media politics!

This made me laugh! because Tony Benn, the British left-wing MP of long standing, has been doing this for fifty years using the oldest technology imaginable! I've experienced it - he records everything so he has a record and he's far less likely to be misquoted plus he records a diary every night. What comes around ...

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By paulcanning at Mon, 04/21/2008 - 1:06pm | login or register to post comments

I can make a guarantee

A video that confronts a candidate with a lie and that leaves them stammering for an answer would - without a doubt in the world - catch on big as long as it was promoted a bit using Digg, Reddit, blogs, etc. etc.

The simplest embarassing question anyone can ask Obama right now is, "why did you lie about LouDobbs? You said he supports MassDeportations, but he doesn't. Will you retract your earlier statement?" I guarantee that if someone goes to his appearances and just concentrates on asking that one simple question, gets a response, and uploads and promotes it it will have a great impact and get tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of views. It might even be linked by Drudge or be played on cable TV.

Wimpy questions that simply result in stock speeches will never do good, but tough questions that result in making a candidate look bad will be tremendously popular and will have a great impact.

By LonewackoDotCom at Mon, 04/21/2008 - 3:25pm | login or register to post comments



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